Vnuchka Memoirs, Part X

Another break from the Russian thread

Taking a breather from Russian, so let’s talk about broken bones. The first story isn’t actually about a broken bone, but a concussion. We were living in Castroville, Texas. I was in first grade and John was in 2nd. The elementary school was so small, my first-grade class was on one side of a large classroom, and the 2nd grade class was on the other. Our teacher would take turns teaching us. I think she was the principal, too. Anyway, so Donna would have been 8, John 7, and I was 6. We didn’t have much in the way of toys, so we often made do with whatever was at hand. Dad had two piles of sand delivered on the front yard. Eventually, he would spread it and build his dream yard (we wouldn’t live there long enough). Anyway, these sandhills were perfect bunkers for us to play soldier. There happened to be some bricks lying around and we decided to use them as grenades. I would duck down behind my bunker and John would lob a brick over it. Then he would duck down and I’d lob one over him. I somehow got out of sync and stood up when John was lobbing his grenade. I took it right in the forehead. Blood everywhere. Babysitter was horrified. She ran in and called Mom, who rushed home and took me to the emergency room at Wilford Hall Hospital on Lackland Air Force Base. They quickly determined that I did not have a fractured skull, but were concerned that I might have a concussion. So they put a huge bandage at an angle across my forehead and sent us home, but warned Mom to keep me awake all night and to watch for signs of a concussion. I actually remember staying up and being miserable and tired. We made it through the night, though. The cool thing was this was just before school pictures, so somewhere, floating around in our family archives, is my first grade photo with me smiling and a giant bandage covering a big part of my face.