I probably can’t have another one. I sure don’t want to find out what it will do to me. The last one was bad enough.

1. 5 years old, trying to throw a large rock over the neighbor’s fence and having it go straight up and straight down only to land on my head. That one took staples to fix

2. 7 years old, playing fumbelitis in the neighbors’ back yard. I dove for the ball at the same time that Jimmy Parsons dove for the ball. We knocked heads. I weighed 100. He weighed 200. On my way home I tripped and hit my head again on a retaining wall. My poor mom had to change the bucket and stay up with me all night

3. 12 years old. Boy Scout Hygiene lecture. I was sitting behind the projector when Tom Suek accidentally ejected a whole reel of film and it landed on my forehead. I still have the ridge with the scar from that one. They had to change the carpet. So much blood.

4. 14 years old. Holy Angels vs. Rochester Lourdes. I had the puck along the boards looking for someone to pass to. A guy charged me out of the corner of my eye and knocked me in the air. I landed with the the base of my skull below the helmet line on the edge of the boards. I woke up on the bus with a full bucket between my knees.

5. 16 Years old. I was crewing on a C-Scow at the ILYA championship regatta. The skipper had an accidental jibe in 25 knot winds. The boom slammed into my head. I spent the rest of the race face down in the bottom of the boat. He was so proud to finish under those conditions.

6. 19 years old. Super Week in Milwaukee. I was at the front of the pack as the course wound through County Stadium parking lot. After a hairpin turn, I got knocked down and the rest of the pack rode over me. Three separate riders rode over the base of my skull below the helmet line. One of them left puncture wounds from his sprocket. I didn’t finish that race, but I came in third place in a race two days later.

7. 20 years old. Ceder Rapids Criterium. Chasing a break away on a reverse angle 90-degree corner, I hit the opposite curb and face planted on the sidewalk at 30 miles an hour, skidding to a stop the length of a gravel driveway. The strap helmet wasn’t enough. The concussion wasn’t the worst part of that crash. They spent 4 hours scrubbing gravel out of my arm, leg and side.

8. 28 years old. I was working as an apartment turnover guy in student housing as a summer job during graduate school. I was late coming back to the office at the end of the day. I ran down the stairs of a townhouse smack dab into the overhang. They found me at the bottom of the stairs in a puddle of my own vomit. The good news is, that was the end of my dyslexia. True story.

9. 38 years old. I was helping my friend rewire the mast of his boat and we were trying to put it up using the travel lift. Carrying one end of the mast to the boat, I hit my head on a bolt hanging down from the steel I beam on travel lift. Twice. That one took two years of PCS. I still have a large dent on the top of my head in the shape of a bolt.