Drew Magary - The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life After Brain Damage

This was gonna be a legit playdate. No bullshit. Mitch himself had invited me over personally. I was only in first grade, but that didnt stop me from being a social climber. Back in the eighties, you got tagged with that epithet at school if you were unrelentingly thirsty. But I wanted friends, and I wanted other kids to know that I had them. Was that so wrong?

In my mind, I was clearly different from the social climbers because I DESERVED more friends. All the other booger eaters deserved their place at the bottom of the grade-school clique system. Not me. This playdate with Mitch was gonna be my ticket to BMOC status. Kids were gonna consider themselves lucky to be my friend. They would beg me to come over to their place, and I would get to play with all of their toys, instead of playing with my own boring crap. I would be the king of Chicago.

So when Mitch asked me over, I pounced on his offer like it was a free Mrs. Fields cookie. We were gonna be Official Friends, which was a potential stepping-stone to acquiring more Official Friends. I needed those badly. I was desperate to be liked. This happens when youre a first grader, obviously. It also happens when youre an overweight loudmouth, which I also was at the time. I was picked last for games of dodgeball and for pretty much everything else as well. One time, at recess, Brian found a copy of Playboy sitting in a ditch. He let all the other boys have a look inside but didnt bother to offer me a turn. I guess he was doing me a favor, because whenever I saw bare boobs at age seven in a PG movie (just try watching an eighties PG movie with your kids now; the MPAA was a lot more forgiving back then), it freaked me out. That didnt stop dirty little Drew from wishing he had been worthy of a peek inside an honest-to-God porno mag, though. That desperation to be liked wouldnt subside for many, many years.

The day arrived. I went over to Mitchs apartment. I remember one thing that happened during the playdate and one thing only.

We were playing on the couch. If you know kids, you know that they dont treat furniture the way normal people treat furniture. You eat off a dining table; they carve pentagrams into it. You lovingly curate a collection of lamps and pretty pictures to adorn your side tables; they use those tables for storing Legos, Matchbox cars, Rubiks Cubes, and any other shit that theyve gotten tired of playing with. You sit on a couch. No child has ever just sat on a couch. A whole new cycle of human evolution will have to pass before they do. To kids, a couch is a hiding spot, a chaise longue, a fort, a hurdle for show horses, a garbage can, a trampoline, and whatever the fuck else they feel like making it on a whim. If this were an ad, I would tell you that a couch is a fantastic blank canvas upon which a child can color in the farthest reaches of their imagination.

But this is not an ad. Mitch and I were not engaging in some spontaneous Montessori lesson. All we wanted to do was stand on top of the couch and wrestle. So we did.

As in any living roomall of which are uncomfortable and uselessthere was a coffee table stationed in front of the couch, where grown-ups could rest their drinks and stack unread copies of Time magazine. I didnt notice this table, or its sharp corners, until it was too late. Mitch and I were standing on the couch and monkeying around when I lost my balance and fell backward. No way to break my fall. No way to turn around and brace myself. The back of my head smashed into one of the corners.

Id had my share of boo-boos as a kid, but I had never required stitches for anything. I was gonna need stitches for this. Many of them. I felt something spongy and wet on the back of my head. Thats my brain, I thought to myself. My brain is coming out of me. When I pulled my hand away, it was drenched in blood. I had no idea you could bleed that much and not die. A kid at school named Diego once bragged at lunchtime that he had tasted his own blood and that it tasted like grape juice. I now had what felt like a gallon of Welchs running down my wrist.

I screamed like a Mack truck drifting sideways down the highway. Mitchs face turned whiter than milk. His mom came running into the room. The playdate was over. I was going to the hospital.

My mom came and took me to the emergency room, where doctors laid me facedown on the bed and held me by my neck to keep me from moving. I was still screaming. I was not a kid who hid his emotions well. What you saw and heard from me was precisely what I was feeling. I made enough noise to let everyone in the OR, and probably greater Chicago, know that I was in shrieking pain. I could hear me. Primal screams flew out of my mouth, looped around my face, and flew back into my two pristine ears, scaring me shitless. The pain was the only thing I could hear. The metallic scent of my own coagulating blood was all I could smell.

The doctor begged me to calm down and told me that I would be all right. My brain was NOT coming out of my head, he assured me. I didnt believe him. As far as I was concerned, he had all the credibility of my mom in the drivers seat telling me that we were almost at the end of a long road trip. I knew this doctor was lying because he told me, Im going to stitch up your wound. Itll hurtsay it with mejust a little bit.

Are you gonna use a needle? I asked him. I hated needles. Id had enough splinters before this injury to know that needles sucked.

Yes, Ill use a needle.

I DONT WANNA SEE IT!

Were gonna numb up the area a little bit and you wont feel it much.

Again, lies. I felt the whole of the needle puncture my scalp again and again. Hurt just as much as if he hadnt used any anesthetic at all. The stitch job never ended. This was 1984, mind you. Today they could patch up a similar wound in half a second using Dermabond and surgical tape. But in 1984, I got the Civil War treatment. After an eternity of stabbing pain the doctor finished his gruesome handiwork and my mom took me home. At some point along the way, I transitioned from screaming to crying in staccato jags. My jacket became a bib for quick-spreading tears and snot.