Horse riding at thirteen gave one a lasting memento. A spectacular... is there any other kind... fall without a hard hat gave one more than a black eye. Which is a misnomer by the way as it went every colour of the rainbow. It bounced the brain hard enough to cause epilepsy and frontal lobe damage.
The epilepsy was not big deal in many ways. Oh there were tonic clonics, or as they used to be known grand mal seizures... never understood why they changed the name on those... and one always managed to have them somewhere public. But as an adult one can go years without one. Mind you if you listen to doctors; you can’t drive (sensible), use power tools (yeah kind of inconvenient to someone who renovated houses... so ignored completely) or swim alone (water... ugh... no worries there). Honestly those guys could suck the joy out of any day.
On the other hand frontal lobe damage is way more interesting stuff. Probably the most interesting known case is Phineas Gage. For the rest of us... it depends. It manifests itself in different ways though the most common is poor impulse control. Oh and one can’t do higher maths for shit or remember patterns very well. So you can teach one to dance or play cards, but you are going to have to do it again the next time you want to do it. That is improving over time though... but don’t tell you know who... otherwise one will be playing some nasty little game in the evenings L
In one small teenager all of this combined to cause some major personality changes. As a child one was quiet, withdrawn and a loner. As a teenager one became the proverbial wild child. Most people have a little voice that goes do you really think that is a good idea? If there was one it was on mute... permanently. The difference was that one was as secretive as hell... think that was when the secret squirrel tendencies developed to be honest... and had this rich double life; teenager by day and roaming feral thing by night.
Leaving home at 16 did nothing to improve this at all. There was no thought of consequences. As a teenager and a young adult one partied for days at a time, slept around indiscriminately, hitchhiked everywhere and disappeared for days at a time. All of this was done to the incessant drum beat of just do it, do it. If there are guardian angels... well let’s just say that they got the short straw. There are full time jobs and careers.
4 comments:
And THAT is why no one should get on a horse without a helmet. Foolish woman. :P
Yeah, but they are hot and get in the way... Oh stop being a mother :P
Does it count as being a mother if it's a lesson I had drilled into my head in childhood? Even when I was three and being led at a shambling walk on the old, half-blind pony I had a helmet on my head. My mom would have had a fit otherwise.
I miss riding. sigh If only horses weren't so damnably expensive.
It's strange, most of the time we didn't have a saddle or bridle, let alone a hat. Only the gymkhana girls had gear. And boy did we envy and despise those girls, in equal measure. We were country kids... we rode to school, often two a pony. It was a good way to grow up :)
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