A History Of Unintentional Violence (Towards Myself)

When I was three…

I decided to start shaving. With my dad’s heavy-duty ‘safety’ razor. Without my parents’ knowledge.

In our dimly lit bathroom, while Mom and Dad watched evening television in an adjacent room, I gently guided the razor’s blade along my cheeks… under my nose…over my chin…minus the benefit of any shaving cream or even water.

Because the room was very dark, I could scarcely see my reflection in the mirror over the bathroom sink. As I stood on the foot stool that was ordinarily utilized while I brushed my teeth, I didn’t notice the shallow lacerations and abrasions I was inflicting, nor the numerous streaks of blood that were slowly falling towards my jawline.

I would have stopped if any of it had hurt or even caused me the slightest discomfort. Since the razor was so sharp and the cuts superficial, I felt no pain from what I was doing. So I kept going. “Shaving”.

Though the memory’s nearly fifty years old now, I can still picture the horrified expressions of my mother and father when I proudly entered the living room that evening to show off my ‘work’ with Dad’s razor.

When they took me back to the bathroom to clean my face and inspect my level of injury, I don’t recall feeling any physical pain. I do remember feeling a bit disappointed that they hadn’t been impressed with my accomplishment.

Those reddish marks on my cheeks and around my lips? Shaving scars, almost healed.

Not long after the shaving incident, I accidentally split the rear top of my scalp open.

Once again showing off for my parents, I’d failed horribly. Only this time the failure really, really hurt.

We’d returned home from a day-long road trip to my grandmother’s in Springfield. I’d slept during the drive home, so when it was over and I woke up, I was WIDE awake. Ready to PLAY.

Entering our house with Mom and Dad, I immediately dashed up onto our couch, ran across it to the opposite end, got both my feet up on its armrest and quickly crouched.

My intention was to leap toward a lightweight cushioned armchair several feet away.

Lightweight, i.e. easily moved with sudden force. If only I’d known, eh?

In my boundless enthusiasm for the ‘stunt’ that I was performing for my mom and dad, I launched myself off the side of the couch with such exuberant force that I couldn’t imagine I’d fail to clear the chair’s armrest and safely land in its cushioned seat.

And then I failed.

When my feet made forward contact with the armrest of the much lighter chair, the support legs on that side of the chair skittered away, leaving me without my intended landing zone.

Instead, I fell back onto the hardwood floor…but not until I’d whacked the back top of my scalp on the wooden hand-rest of the couch.

I never lost consciousness due to that head injury, but it opened up a hell of laceration that bled like crazy.

This accident occurred around 1 a.m. Our family doctor, who worked out of his home, lived less than a mile away, so that’s where my parents took me.

My dad held me down, er, stabilized me, while the doctor closed the lac with several stitches. No anesthesia. The stitches hurt even worse than the bleeding cut.

I remember screaming during the entire procedure, which probably lasted five or six minutes at most, but seemed like an hour.

And I only had myself to blame. One might think that even a three-year-old with daredevil tendencies would learn from that experience, right?

That particular three-year-old, however, did not.

To be continued…