One of my earliest memories is of when I was around 3-4. I don’t remember exactly how it happened (did I fall down the stairs?) but I had a gash on the top of my head and blood was gushing from it. I don’t remember much of the injury (duh!) but I remember being at the hospital, my dad carrying me and consoling me while I cried.
I’m touching that spot on my head now. That wound meant that I had a very small spot with no hair growing on it as I had several stiches done on it. Years later, 13 years old I guess and back in India, I was getting together with some of my friends to play some game on the school ground during a free period. We needed bricks for marking off something. So a couple of us went looking for loose bricks that were lying around nearby as the school had some construction going on.
One of my friends, Rafeeq, was fooling around with stuff and without thinking, he tossed two bricks into the air in the general direction of where the rest of us were standing. The others ducked but I hadn’t seen the flying brick headed towards….my head! Too late, I saw the brick coming towards me but I couldn’t move away in time. The edge of the brick hit me hard on the exact same spot and I had another wound there as blood gushed a bit.
I was taken to the hospital a little later with my cousin and they had stiches done on my head. By evening I was drinking a juice and watching tv in my uncle’s house, waiting for my sister & dad to come and pick me up.