Concussions Are Finally Hip

Concussion awareness has grown by leaps and bounds over the last several years . . . in order to coach youth soccer, I must complete a concussion training course and the NFL just settled with former head trauma victims for 765 million dollars . . . but I would like to point out that I was way ahead of the curve on this theme, as I sustained a number of interesting concussions when I was young, and even used one concussion incident as the subject of my college essay (this is probably not surprising to readers who often frequent this blog, as my sentences are often rambling and incoherent, but please bear with me, as Roger Goodell is not allocating any of that money to me, because of our feud) and what makes my concussions so wonderfully cool and ironic is that though I played several years of high school football, I did not sustain any concussions then, instead I knocked myself out in much more creative ways befitting the literary titan that I am: when I was very little, I had a habit of riding my tricycle under the flower boxes on my grandparent's wrap around porch and then standing up . . . my parents would find my little body splayed unconscious on the red-stained deck; in elementary school, on TWO separate occasions, I was running down the hall and the gym teacher, Mr. Weinstein, opened the heavy wood door and I collided with it -- both times I woke in the nurses office . . . Mr. Weinstein awarded me the nickname "Lumpy" for these incidents; in high school, at the state golf tournament, I wore shorts when I wasn't supposed to, and had to race back to the bus and change into a pair of my friend John's XL yellow sweatpants -- which I felt warranted a super-heroic leap out of the bus, but I misjudged the jump and nailed my head on the metal rail that the folding door runs along and knocked myself out cold-- and despite the concussion, I played eighteen lousy holes of golf in blood-soaked clothing . . . but despite my poor play, the upside was that I got a lot of press in the local paper for my courage and idiocy; and then when I was in college at a party in Connecticut, I dove into a deep section of river with the intention of then riding a cooler down the falls, but the deep section of river was actually a huge black rock submerged six inches beneath the water, and if it wasn't for the same friend that lent me the yellow sweatpants, I probably would have drowned,  but he fished me out of the water, unconscious, bloody, and limp, with a chipped incisor . . . but miracle of miracles, as far as I know, none of these head injuries has impaired my cognition in the least.