Another marble…it’s just sitting there in the road! I couldn’t believe my good luck! This one was a cat-eye bolder. The green “cat-eye” was shimmering inside a clear orb. I was on my way home from summer school. I was about nine years old, and I owned a prized collection of marbles. As I turned the corner to the street where I lived, I first found an amber colored clear marble…an “aggie” as we called them. This sparked my interest, and I soon found many more. Marbles were a form of currency for my circle of friends. Even though my mom had told me that I couldn’t “play for keeps,” we did anyway. My best friend and next door neighbor, Bruce and I would play for hours. We sometimes played for “fun,” especially when my parents were in sight, but we usually played for “keeps” which meant we could keep any marble we won during our play. Finding marbles in the middle of the road on my home was a stroke of good fortune, or so it seemed.
Whoa, there’s another aggie! As I stooped to pick it up, I suddenly experienced a flash of white, and I found myself on the ground. I was stunned, and as I looked up, I noticed our neighbor, Rodney, standing over me. I also noticed this large protrusion sticking out from above my left eye. I reached up to touch it, and everything exploded into pain, confusion, and fear. I jumped up and ran the few hundred yards to my driveway and up the path to my front door. There I met my mom coming out the door to see why I was crying and making so much noise. I remember seeing the look of terror when she saw me. That didn’t help much for my fear factor, and I probably bawled that much louder.
What happened was the collision of two young boys who were completely absorbed in their own activities. Rodney lived next door to me on the opposite side of Bruce. He was four years older than me in school, making him the same age as my older sister. Rodney was enjoying this fine summer day by hitting marbles down the street with a baseball bat. He, evidently, didn’t value his marbles as much as I did mine. He was a little bored, and was trying to hit marbles like you would a baseball. He would throw a marble into the air in front of him, and then swing his baseball bat to hopefully hit the marble down the street. Rodney had no clue I was at the other end of the street discovering the marbles he had hit, and I had no idea that Rodney was currently hitting these marbles in my direction. This continued until I stooped right in front of him to pick up one of his marbles just as he was trying to hit another one down the street. Wham!!!
My mom took me immediately to our doctor. He examined the blow that struck me just above and to the left of my left eye on my forehead. I had a bump that raised up at least two to three inches. I could see the bump by just looking up to my left. The doctor told us that if my head had been turned just a 1/4” to the right, that the blow would had hit my temple and surely killed me. That was my first experience of mortality. As the saying goes, “You’re only immortal for a limited time.”
That wasn’t the only time I got thumped on my head. I’m not sure of the chronology, but I think that might have been the first and the most potentially damaging blow to my head. I can think of two other times that were “white light” incidents.
I grew up in suburbia during the 1950’s and 60’s. The kids in my neighborhood all played together in the streets, front and back lawns, and the nearby swimming pool and little league baseball diamond. The houses where we lived had a similar front yard design. Each house had a short driveway that went into the attached garage. All of the houses also had fences that separated the front and back yards. Our house had the usual gate on both sides of the house. I was one of four children in our family. The other homes in the neighborhood housed mostly young families, with the occasional older couple. This meant we had lots of neighborhood games of Hide-and-Go-Seek, Mother-May-I, Simon Says, and other large group games. This particular day, we were playing Hide-and-Go-Seek. We were playing at our house, and the “base” was in the front yard in the middle of the lawn area. Both gates to the back yard were open, because the back yard was part of the play zone. Facing the house, the left gate was around the corner of the house that contained my bedroom. The gate on the right side of the house was around the corner of the house that contained the garage. This round of the game started, and I was one of the hiders. I don’t remember who was “it,” but they were hiding their eyes and counting to 25. I ran to the left gate to hide in the back yard. As I rounded the corner and entered the back, I could hear, “…10, 11, 12, …” I sprinted through the left gate and found a hiding spot near the other gate on the other side of the yard. Soon, I heard, “…23, 24, 25. Here I come, ready or not!”
Not long later, “It” came through the same gate I came in. Soon “It” spotted me, and the race was on. Now, I had to get back to base before “It” did. I sprinted toward the gate near where I was hiding. “It” sprinted back through the gate he came in. I had the shorter route, but I had to be quick if I was going to be safe. All I needed to do was turn the corner and …Wham!!! I got that “white light” moment. For some reason, the garage door was half open, and I had run smack dab right into it with my face. I looked down at my right hand. It had white speckles all over it. I moved my tongue to my front lower teeth, and that’s when I realized the white specks on my hand were pieces of my lower front tooth. That’s when I lost it and went running to my mom.
The other time I tried to knock myself out, I was next door at my best friend Bruce’s house. He had just gotten a pogo stick, and he was bouncing around on it. It looked like fun. We were in his two-car garage. There wasn’t a car in it, so there was a lot of floor space. Finally, I got to have a turn. I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and I was soon jumping pretty high. I then toned it down and started to look around at the ground. I spotted a bar of ivory soap sitting there. I visualized smashing that bar of soap to a pulp. It seemed like such a good idea. Of course, I didn’t give it too much thought. I was a ten-year-old kid and I thought it would be cool to smash that bar of soap. I didn’t realize how slippery that bar of soap could be. As soon as the rubber peg of the pogo stick landed on the soap, the pogo stick went shooting straight out in front of me while I struck the back of my head on the cement floor of that garage. White light again. I don’t know if it actually knocked me out or not, but I remember going to Bruce’s mom for help. I think she put some ice on it and sent me home. I remember having a head ache and taking it easy for awhile.
Thank goodness I have been blessed (and later in life cursed) with strong bones. The blessing is self-evident, but the curse comes from my propensity to grow bone spurs. As my neurosurgeon once told my wife after several hours of back surgery, “His bones are like marble!” As far as my brain? I’m sure it’s not had an affect…affect…affect on me. I’m sure I’m just fine…fine…fine.
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 
Great capture of childhood innocence and stupidity!
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