No, I Don't Think It Is Ash Wednesday

(or How I Got the Forehead Contusion)

The plan was to leave for New York at 10 a.m. "If you want to see Coney Island, we need to beat the traffic."

"O.K. Then I need to get up at 6:30 to get stuff done."

"That is way too early. You can get up at 7:30 and it will be fine."

I got up at 7:30 and we departed the house at 10:20. With one stop to make at the post office. I hopped out of the car and left the car running because someone was cold and needed the heat on while he listened to the radio and read his book. Someone turned off the car, but left the heat and radio on -- and unbeknownst to someone -- the lights were also on.

"Who the hell drives with the lights on during the day?"

"I do."

"Well that's stupid."

"So's your face." [This is a standard rejoinder in the household indicating a lack of agreement and a request to move on to the next potential topic for disagreement.]

So after standing in a line to mail a package (hope you like it!) I came outside and happily tried to start my car to head off on vacation. Car doesn't start.

More leaving the lights on is stupid, more well if you don't know how to pop a clutch without me explaining it then I can't explain it, and finally the bright idea to get a jump start. The startled woman next to us agrees to move her minivan around and provide the juice.

I hop out of the car to pop the hood. Done, I return to the driver seat and await cable connection. Then I remember that the last time someone ran down my battery, he had a hard time locating the battery as it was under an relatively unmarked cover. So I hop back out of the car -- and yes, I was fully impatient, annoyed, and foul-tempered -- and leaned over to pull the cover off and conked my forehead HARD on the raised hood.

I staggered back to the car mumbling, "fuck it. Someone can find it himself." He did and we were on our way -- finally, at 10:48.

So I drive for a 1/2 hour. Then I turn around and go back to the house to get someone's ID. I ask for aspirin from the kitchen because I have a headache. Not enough coffee, I assume, vowing to get a large cup at the first stop.

First stop is 3 hours later. Aspirin has not touched the headache which has become a dull throb. Amazingly, I still think it is caffeine withdrawal. We enter the rest stop, I use the facilities, and inspect my eye makeup while I wash my hands. We get in line, buy burgers (Roy Rogers still has Double R Bar burgers! Who knew? They aren't as good as I remember, but then, life is like that.) We get up and I go to Starbucks to get my coffee. Line is too long, so I make the ultimate sacrifice and order a coffee from the urn at Cinnabon. While I wait for my coffee to be poured (a 3 minute span of time, oddly), I turn to someone and say, "Do I have something on my forehead. It kind of hurts here." I point to just right of center on my forehead.

My eyes get bigger. Someone's eyes get bigger. And I feel a knot the size of a walnut on my forehead.

"How the hell didn't you see this in the past 3 hours?"

"I wasn't looking right at you."

"I'm pretty sure a bump this big has a profile."

"Holy shit it is getting bigger. Stop making me laugh."

By the time we get to the car we are laughing hysterically -- someone from the speed at which the knot is growing and me from the leaking brain fluid from the skull I now realized is cracked -- the walnut is bigger. I'm advised to put ice on it.

"How would you like me to do that and drive?"

"I'm not sure, baby. Want me to drive?"

"No. I already have a headache. Give me one of the ice cubes from your drink."

I then proceed to give myself an ice cream headache on TOP of the cracked cranium headache for the next 20 minutes. I become adept at ice cube balancing and refuse the offer of a ski cap to hold the cube in place.

"Bad enough I'm going to meet your friends with a third eye, let's not add hat hair."

Someone (after another bout of hysterical laughing), "it hardly shows, baby. You are beautiful."

We did not beat rush hour. My knot did show, but didn't start to turn purple until we got home, 3 days later.

And no, co-workers, I don't think it is Ash Wednesday and that isn't a smudge on my forehead. It's a souvenir.


Tell all your single friends, the best pizza EVER had eggplant parmesan slices on it and was at Danny's in Central Islip, NY.


XO, JamieSmitten