Hector's Hectic Life #15 by Lem plus My Scars and Coal

"Fore" -- This cartoon was real for me. When I was in my midteens, Stuart, one of my friends, suggested we play golf in his yard. He had a rather large yard, though not quite golf course size. It may have been suitable to a chip 'n' putt, but we knew nothing about golf except you hit a small white ball with a club and tried to get it into a hole somewhere. We choose only to use the Number One Wood, the driver.

We went outside, he, me and a third friend. I struck at a ball and it sailed across the yard, not breaking anything, and then I handed the golf club to our third friend and told him to wait until I was out of the way.

He didn't wait.

He caught me smack dab in the middle of my forehead, fortunately missing my glasses. Those cartoons of seeing little stars are true. I saw stars and planets swirling around in a sudden darkness. I never fell over. I heard voices talking to me from down a well somewhere and opened my eyes.

Stuart asked if I was okay.

I said I was.

Then Gary, the boy who had struck me said, "you're bleeding."

I waved him off. Just then I saw a spurt of blood stream down my lens. One spurt after another began. Gary began yelling something, I don't recall what. Stuart was shouting for his mother, who soon came out of the house. She took one look at me and began dashing about in a circle screaming. Here I stood with these three people running back and forth and all shouting. I turned and calmly walked to my family doctor, who conveniently was Stuart's next door neighbor and had his office there.

I was taken immediately to the Doctor's examination room and laid on the table. Someone called my home and soon my mother and grandmother were there, clucking and squawking like two frightened hens.

I was making jokes while Dr. Neff sewed up my head. I probably wasn't so brave; I was probably in shock.

I carried a scar down the center of my forehead for years, a nice match for the long scar on my left cheek where a barb wire fence barb had once went through my lower face when I fell upon it in kindergarten.

No, we were not such young terrors that Mrs. Helms fenced us in like cattle. We were on a field trip up behind the town's railroad tracks and the fence ran along a neighboring pasture. We had went there to collect coal (anyone remember coal, our homes were once heated by it) for a project. I still have the coal paperweight I made that day.

I don't have the scars. Age eventually wore them away.

Me in 1946 after graduating from Mrs. Helms kindergarten, surrounded by the paperweight I made from coal as it appears today. It probably hasn't changed much. I have.