Dain bramage

Last night, I whammed my head so hard that I went reeling, bounced off my van and fell to the pavement. I was stepping up onto a sidewalk at a little shopping center and cracked my head against a thick wooden sign that jutted down from the eaves. Completely dark, of course, so I didn't even know the sign was there and was caught totally unawares.

It was so sudden. I fell backward off the curb onto the hood of my van, clutching my head. Then, because I apparently wasn't hurt enough, I hurled myself to the gritty asphalt so I could collect strawberries on my knees.

I'm okay today, I think, though my wife keeps shining flashlights in my eyes. I've got a knot on my head and a sore neck and that all-over shocky-stiff feeling you get the day after a car wreck.

I'd just been telling my mom earlier in the day how I'd whipped the last of my niggling health complaints (three successive colds, wrenched back, wrenched knee, pulled tooth), and was feeling great for a change. So, naturally, I go out and walk headfirst into some lumber.