The story begins with my son Jaron’s 8th birthday, which we celebrated with friends and family this past Sunday, two days ago. He’s getting to the age where I’m starting to think that his presents are cool. Such was the case with the particular present that plays a role in this saga. My brother got him a spiffy super soaker squirt gun. You know, the kind that you fill up with like a gallon of water and then pump 20 times so that you can shoot the thing like 800 feet or something ridiculous. That squirt gun is cool. Anyway, yesterday evening I wanted to go out and mow the lawn and I wanted the kids to come out and enjoy the outdoors as well. Jaron was sitting inside playing with his new Nintendo games. In order to entice him into coming outside I told him we could play with the squirt guns. My plan was to dig out an old squirt gun and have a good ole’ fashioned shoot off. Well, our other squirt gun ended up being broken, so it amounted to Jaron chasing me around the yard like a scene out of “The Fugitive” or “Behind Enemy Lines”. During one stretch, while I was making like Owen Wilson and just running around dodging bullets, (BTW, running side to side is the most effective way to dodge a super soaker) I decided that something needed to change. I was getting tired of being the whipping boy and had an idea bout how to turn the tables.
I was hiding behind our nice cherry blossom tree making plans to dart out and get to the water hose so I could take the offensive. Jaron had stopped to repump and I saw my opportunity. I took a couple of steps back away from the tree and started to my right toward the hose. Jaron looked up and swung his gun up to shoot. I dodged left and did a little hop crouch, ninja style. I imagined that it looked pretty sweet if anyone was watching. Then, as I leapt back to the right, toward the hose, my forehead slammed right into a low lying branch of the aforementioned cherry blossom tree. It knocked me off of my feet, flat onto my back. I popped up quickly because Jaron was letting loose volley after volley, (unlike Luke Skywalker) having no mercy on his fallen father, plus, my mind had convinced me that people might be watching. I quickly made it to the hose and started hooking it up. I reached up to feel my forehead and a knot was forming. I called timeout, which is one of the benefits of a squirt gun battle. Then I realized that I still hadn’t mowed the lawn and I decided to go ahead and get that knocked out real quick, before I got knocked out real quick. I mowed quickly, still thinking about those imagined people who were watching me, and no doubt laughing at the emerging knot on my forehead.
About an hour later, with a good 20 minutes of ice applied, I found that I had a HUGE knot on my forehead. The knot was shaped something like the state of Nevada and was nearly equal to it in size. I was hoping for an appropriate reaction to it from the family, but the kids were thoroughly unimpressed. Jaron said I looked like a wizard, whatever that means. Ava said, “Wow”, then proceeded to ask about dessert. Davin couldn’t even see the thing for some reason. I pointed right at it and he just gave me a blank look. Maybe my head just looks lumpy to him all the time, I don’t know. I began to wonder what it would morph into the next day, and whether or not I could go to work sporting the new look.
The next morning the swelling was down, but something new had appeared. Right in the middle of the knot was a nice little scrape. Now, much to my chagrin, my co-workers have given me the particularly reprehensible nickname of “Gorby”. Suffice it to say that Mikhail Gorbachev is not one of my heroes. Geez. This is surely one to remember, if I can remember anything.