Life is Strange
As I mentioned in an earlier post it hailed the day I was born (June 14), which is just one of several strange things about my life. What do they all mean? I have my theory, which I'll share with you below.
So as I was saying, it hailed the day that I was born. That combined with the fact that my Aunt Doris had to drive my Mom to the hospital (Dad was working) made for quite a nerve racking day for my Mom. You see our family car back then had a push button automatic transmission, which Aunt Doris had never driven. So in between contractions my Mom had to teach her baby sister how to drive the car! Somehow the two of them made it to the hospital and a few hours later I was born. My Mom remembers very little about my birth, as those were the days when Moms were pretty much knocked out on pain meds!
When my Mom regained full consciousness she noticed a couple odd things about me. For one I had two webbed toes on each of my feet, which didn't surprise her all that much because my Mom also has them. Still I was the only one of her four children to inherit this trait. Next she noticed that I had an angel's kiss (red mark) between my eyes, which connected to three red lines (veins) that went up my forehead to form a double V (or pitchfork). Thankfully these marks faded by the time I was 9 or 10, although you can still the faint outline of them under the right circumstances.
When I was about a year old we took a trip up to Nova Scotia, so my Great-Grandmother Kent could see me for the first time. By this time I had a big mop of dark brown hair, but on the top of my head was a circle of light brown hair, which formed a halo. According to my Great-Grandmother this meant that I would have good luck my entire life. I'm not sure where she got her information from (I've never been able to find any mention of this wive's tale) but as you'll see in the continuation below, she must have known something.
Sometime early in life I acquired a small scar shaped like a lightning bolt on the little finger of my left hand. I have no idea how I got the scar (damn you Voldemort!
), but it may have been when I was hit by a car when I was three years old. As you can see I survived, although I was pretty banged up at the time and my face was a mess. The most interesting injuries were the imprint of what looked like a tire tread on my face. You see the car didn't really hit me, I hit it. I ran straight into a moving car traveling at around 35 MPH, hit the front tire face first, bounced off, hit the curb, bounced off that and ended up back in the road. If I had just been a little faster in those days (or the car a little slower) I would have been under the wheels and then... Well then you wouldn't be reading this, would you!
So you're probably wondering how the heck did I end up hitting a car. Well that day my Mom, my sister Lynn and my brother Jimmy went for a walk downtown to go shopping. Along the way Lynn got me a balloon, but I lost it and it floated away (important later!). On the walk back home our neighbor across the street stopped and gave us a ride back home. When we got to her house I immediately jumped out of the car behind Jimmy and ran to the street. I saw my older brother Greg in the doorway of our house, started yelling to him that I had lost my balloon and took off running to him before my Mom could catch me. Sadly for me the car got in my way before I made it. The strange thing is that everyone in my family was there to see me get hit. Mom, Lynn and Jimmy were on one side of the street, Greg was in the doorway and unbeknownst to me my Dad was in the upstairs window looking down as he had heard me yelling to Greg. In later years Dad would say that he thought for sure I was dead when he saw me go flying off the side of the car.
Amazingly the sum total of my injuries were a hairline fracture of the middle finger of my right hand, which required a splint (yes I was giving the finger to people at age 3!), 11 stitches inside my mouth (from where I bit down) and the aforementioned tire tread shaped cuts all over my face. Today there are no signs of any of this, (my Mom put hydrogen peroxide on all my cuts to prevent scarring), except for a very small scar on my forehead which was hidden below my bangs. There is only one other long term scar from the accident and you can't see it. In order to stitch me up, the doctors told my parents they had to cover my entire face except for the area around my mouth. This experience is most likely the reason why I'm claustrophobic today, although it probably didn't help that Greg used to pretend to be the Blob (I hated that movie!) and throw a blanket over my head when I was sleeping!
The final interesting thing about my early childhood is that I was ambidextrous. In my family there were three lefthanders (Mom, Lynn, Jimmy) and three righthanders (me, Dad, Greg) and as you can imagine we had assigned seats at the dinner table. Since all five of them were my teachers growing up I ended up being able to do things with both my left and right hands. Of course it also was very confusing and was probably the cause of my being unable to tie my own shoes until I was 6 years old!
So what do all these strange marks, interesting weather conditions, genetic traits and haloed hair mean? Probably nothing! But it got me to thinking. If I had been born back in the middle ages, when superstition was an everyday part of life, what would have been people's reaction to a webbed toed, devil's pitchforked, haloed, ambidextrous child with a lightning bolt scar who survived being hit by a oxcart? Would I have been seen as a demon, an angel, Harry Potter? Something tells me I wouldn't have been very popular back then!
So as I was saying, it hailed the day that I was born. That combined with the fact that my Aunt Doris had to drive my Mom to the hospital (Dad was working) made for quite a nerve racking day for my Mom. You see our family car back then had a push button automatic transmission, which Aunt Doris had never driven. So in between contractions my Mom had to teach her baby sister how to drive the car! Somehow the two of them made it to the hospital and a few hours later I was born. My Mom remembers very little about my birth, as those were the days when Moms were pretty much knocked out on pain meds!
When my Mom regained full consciousness she noticed a couple odd things about me. For one I had two webbed toes on each of my feet, which didn't surprise her all that much because my Mom also has them. Still I was the only one of her four children to inherit this trait. Next she noticed that I had an angel's kiss (red mark) between my eyes, which connected to three red lines (veins) that went up my forehead to form a double V (or pitchfork). Thankfully these marks faded by the time I was 9 or 10, although you can still the faint outline of them under the right circumstances.
When I was about a year old we took a trip up to Nova Scotia, so my Great-Grandmother Kent could see me for the first time. By this time I had a big mop of dark brown hair, but on the top of my head was a circle of light brown hair, which formed a halo. According to my Great-Grandmother this meant that I would have good luck my entire life. I'm not sure where she got her information from (I've never been able to find any mention of this wive's tale) but as you'll see in the continuation below, she must have known something.
Sometime early in life I acquired a small scar shaped like a lightning bolt on the little finger of my left hand. I have no idea how I got the scar (damn you Voldemort!
), but it may have been when I was hit by a car when I was three years old. As you can see I survived, although I was pretty banged up at the time and my face was a mess. The most interesting injuries were the imprint of what looked like a tire tread on my face. You see the car didn't really hit me, I hit it. I ran straight into a moving car traveling at around 35 MPH, hit the front tire face first, bounced off, hit the curb, bounced off that and ended up back in the road. If I had just been a little faster in those days (or the car a little slower) I would have been under the wheels and then... Well then you wouldn't be reading this, would you!So you're probably wondering how the heck did I end up hitting a car. Well that day my Mom, my sister Lynn and my brother Jimmy went for a walk downtown to go shopping. Along the way Lynn got me a balloon, but I lost it and it floated away (important later!). On the walk back home our neighbor across the street stopped and gave us a ride back home. When we got to her house I immediately jumped out of the car behind Jimmy and ran to the street. I saw my older brother Greg in the doorway of our house, started yelling to him that I had lost my balloon and took off running to him before my Mom could catch me. Sadly for me the car got in my way before I made it. The strange thing is that everyone in my family was there to see me get hit. Mom, Lynn and Jimmy were on one side of the street, Greg was in the doorway and unbeknownst to me my Dad was in the upstairs window looking down as he had heard me yelling to Greg. In later years Dad would say that he thought for sure I was dead when he saw me go flying off the side of the car.
Amazingly the sum total of my injuries were a hairline fracture of the middle finger of my right hand, which required a splint (yes I was giving the finger to people at age 3!), 11 stitches inside my mouth (from where I bit down) and the aforementioned tire tread shaped cuts all over my face. Today there are no signs of any of this, (my Mom put hydrogen peroxide on all my cuts to prevent scarring), except for a very small scar on my forehead which was hidden below my bangs. There is only one other long term scar from the accident and you can't see it. In order to stitch me up, the doctors told my parents they had to cover my entire face except for the area around my mouth. This experience is most likely the reason why I'm claustrophobic today, although it probably didn't help that Greg used to pretend to be the Blob (I hated that movie!) and throw a blanket over my head when I was sleeping!
The final interesting thing about my early childhood is that I was ambidextrous. In my family there were three lefthanders (Mom, Lynn, Jimmy) and three righthanders (me, Dad, Greg) and as you can imagine we had assigned seats at the dinner table. Since all five of them were my teachers growing up I ended up being able to do things with both my left and right hands. Of course it also was very confusing and was probably the cause of my being unable to tie my own shoes until I was 6 years old!
So what do all these strange marks, interesting weather conditions, genetic traits and haloed hair mean? Probably nothing! But it got me to thinking. If I had been born back in the middle ages, when superstition was an everyday part of life, what would have been people's reaction to a webbed toed, devil's pitchforked, haloed, ambidextrous child with a lightning bolt scar who survived being hit by a oxcart? Would I have been seen as a demon, an angel, Harry Potter? Something tells me I wouldn't have been very popular back then!
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Saturday's blood/marrow drive was a huge success! I'm pretty sure they broke the state record for the most people signing up to be a marrow donor at one event. I discovered awhile ago that I wasn't signed up for the donor list (due to a screwup at Alex's old hospital), so I was one of the new additions to the bone marrow registry. It's pretty unlikely, but considering all the coincidences that led up to this point, wouldn't it be great if I turned out to be a match for Wayne. If that happens I will be officially freaked out, in a good way! 
