Hereditary Headbanger

Last night Lucy had one of her monumental outbursts where she flops around like a fish out of water. This is complete with throwing her head back in a fit of rage - usually resulting in her banging her poor head into something solid hence causing her to get even more pissed off...Rinse, repeat.

Leslie and her mom have been flabbergasted at this behavior. Sure they have seen children get mad, but never to the point of bringing additional injury to themselves with this head banging. I sit silently while they discuss among themselves knowing that while I never had the temper that Lucy has (that is ALL Leslie), I in fact did have my episodes of head banging as a child. This is something I am sure I will hereby get blamed for after Leslie reads this so I am going to get it out in the open now. Below is just a sample of some of the head trauma I have caused myself over the years.

• As an infant, I spent a few days in the hospital after I accidentally head butted my mother in the mouth - specifically her two front teeth. I hereby plead my innocence due to me being less than a year old and having absolutely no clue what was going on. However, it became a precedent apparently.
  
  
• I remember my father restoring an older Pontiac convertible when I was a young child. When he went to give a test drive I quickly volunteered to be his backseat passenger as my brother rode shotgun. Having never ridden in a convertible (that I recall), I remember bouncing on the backseat feeling the wind against my face. That was until the car hood flew open, smacking my head and slam dunking me back into the seat. No blood, just a HUGE knot.
  
  
• In grade school, I fell off the top of an 8-foot slide, again on my noggin' leaving another nice-sized knot. No wonder my head is so damn lumpy.
  
  
• As a teen, I went for a ride in a car with my brother and my uncle in the back of our property. I guess I shouldn't say in the car, but rather on it as I was hanging on for dear life on the hood. A couple of doughnuts later and a was flying backwards through the air giving the back of my melon a real good smack upon landing.
  
  
• This was followed a few years later by falling out of a tree in the front yard and doing a perfect face plant on the ground below. To this day there is still a dent in the yard from where my face hit. I think my father keeps it as a warning for his grandchildren.
  
  
• In my twenties in would be softball as my main nemesis. I took a line drive off of my skull while pitching that if it were two inches lower it would have drilled my temple and probably left me in pretty bad shape. Luckily, it just caused an enormous growth out of the side of my head - complete with lace marks from the softball. This may have been my first documented concussion, but I highly doubt my first in my life.
  
  
• Softball would strike again as I took a shot from a thrown ball off of the eyebrow. This is only significant because of all of the head injuries I have sustained, this was the only one to cause me to bleed. Until then I was merely a conglomeration of lumps, bumps and knots.

So as I watch my youngest go through her angry phase of being a one-year old, I hope that God has blessed her with my hard shell of a skull. I am truly hoping she doesn't follow her father's path of cranium carnage and that this is just a passing phase.

And to my wife, who may wonder way I sometimes do the things I do, say the things I say, or forget the things I forget - let the above issues give me just a tiny bit of leeway.

I need all of the excuses I can find.