Brain Explosion

It felt like something had burst in my brain. And I don’t mean this as a metaphor to a great idea. I mean this in the literal sense. The physical sense. The holy shit, what the hell just blew up in my head sense! I won’t tell you what I was doing at the time but I tensed up, I grabbed my head and I went down in pain. I couldn’t find any pressure points to release the excruciating pain as I grabbed, pressed and dug my knuckles into my temples, back of my neck and eye sockets. Light from the TV actually made things worse, I need complete blackness and silence. I don’t know how long it took but the pain finally became tolerable and I told Donna the ER was not necessary.

All night I kept testing my vision, testing to see if I could move my legs and arms and hear from both ears. All night the tiny hint of a night light would be too much light. Every little sound was deafening. Every bit of thought was of my brain exploding as I slept.

The next morning it was like the lingering effect of a migraine. Maybe that’s all it was. The worst migraine of my life. Hopefully nothing blew up. Hopefully my brain is ok. Hopefully I’ll live.

My eyes are off though. I can’t focus as well as normal. I definitely need to see a doctor.

And still, today, Monday morning, my head still has that lingering pain. It didn’t help that I got up at 4:00 AM because Jake kept waking me up complaining about something or another. That’s the last time he’s having chocolate before going to bed.

Through the night I was testing my brain, seeing if I could remember things from the past and how far I could remember. So I went through my early years. My Wonder Years starting at five years old. I pulled at least one memory from each grade beginning with Kindergarten.

Here’s what I got.

Kindergarten – I remember walking up the school with my mom and crying. I was embarrassed to have my pillow with me and told my mom to hide it before we got to class. I remember Marcel, Tina and Otto in my class.

1st Grade – Miss McDonald’s class. She was really old and really nice. And I remember seeing Roger in class. He looked so confident. As if he was a seasoned veteran of 1st grade. We met the summer right before school started at the swimming pool. It was really cool to see him there.

2nd Grade – Miss Bruce’s class. The difference between being a 1st grader and 2nd grader was huge. I felt like Roger looked in 1st grade. Like a season vet of grade school. I loved 2nd grade. We went to San Clemente Beach on the train. President Nixon was supposed to meet with us at his home but he was sick. We gave his security our letters we wrote to him. That was my first field trip.

3rd Grade – I hate 3rd Grade and Mrs. Hawks. She was the meanest teacher ever. Willie Manipol and I made up a way to communicate during class by tapping our pencils on our desks. For every 1 tap, an A. 2 taps, a B. We’d tap and tap and tap when we could and communicated from across the room.

4th Grade – Mrs. Carl’s class. She was awesome. I was so glad I was in her class versus the other 4th Grade class because from what I heard, the other teacher was MEAN! Yes, with capital letters! I was the fastest times table kid in class!

5th Grade – Miss Bishoff. This is the first teacher I fell in love with. I could have married her and was this close to asking her. It was also the year of romantic letters and the hamster eating incident I’ve referred to in previous posts. That was a wonderful year.

6th Grade – Mr. Conner’s Class. The coolest teacher to have in grade school. A radio DJ at night and a 6th grade teacher by day. This was also the year of my very first kiss. Brenda Eaton, Outdoor school, in the snow. We snuck out of dinner mess hall and sat outside. It just started to snow and we scooted closer together. We kissed. It was awesome. I wrote about it several years ago in a short story.

7th Grade – My first year in Junior High and my first French Kiss! AND… my first broken heart. I wrote about it in a short called, “Chocolate Shake and Fries”.

8th Grade – My last year in Junior High. I think I started hating school at 8th grade. I think about it now and it was the math and the English that I hated so much. It’s weird since all I do now is math and all I want to do is write… in English. LOL. Maybe I felt all that stuff held me back. Math was logical, of course, but maybe I was ready for something harder. Something where I needed to discover and present versus learn and be tested on. I wanted to put things to the test versus get tested on things. In English, I didn’t want to write by rules, I just wanted to write. Thank goodness for spell check nowadays.

And that’s my years prior to high school.

I think my memory is fine.

It’s my eyes that are going.

Hope today is a better day.