How do you knock a person unconscious?  Movies make it look so easy and convenient.

I’ve actually lost consciousness twice that I can remember.  One time, I was about twelve and my friends and I were playing a stupid and dangerous game.  We called it Blackout.  What you did was you breathed hard and fast to the point of hyperventilation, then held your breath and had some other idiot squeeze you tightly around the chest.  The one time I tried it, I woke up on the floor. 

The other time was because of a bleeding puppy.  My sister Laura used to work for a dog and cat veterinarian in Midlothian, Virginia, and somehow I got involved in an after-hours emergency in which we were trying to save a dehydrated puppy. Probably distemper. Anyway, Laura was trying to start an IV into a tiny vein in the puppy’s foreleg, and he was just bleeding all over the place. Tiny, emaciated little thing, and blood everywhere.  I woke up on the floor that time too. 

I had another close call with consciousness when I got my ears pierced at age 16.  It was one of those little kiosks in the mall, and I was fine until I stood up.  Then I started to get tunnel vision (it’s real), and the mall guard called me a moment later to point out that I was trying to go up the down escalator.  I stayed on my feet though, and the moment passed quickly.

I’ve had my consciousness taken away by chemical means about four, maybe five times, in my life.  First time was at the age of 19, when I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled. In those days the entire operation, including the drugs, cost about $500, and I paid the tab myself. Laura was with me, and drove me home afterwards. I went to work the next day with gaping holes in every corner of my mouth, and cried in the waitress station. The pain pills made me hallucinate. 

The other three times that I can remember were for medical procedures that turned out to be unnecessary. But as far as actually being bonked on the head and passing out, it hasn’t happened.  I remember when I was teaching middle school in Coffman Cove, Alaska, one of the kids drop-kicked a basketball and hit the aide in the head.  She sagged against the wall of the gym, but came back to herself without falling down. 

I should probably do some research here, to find out more about what damage you can suffer from being knocked unconscious.  If I were Nora Ephron I probably would.  I’ve heard all sorts of terrible things about the brains of retired football players, and their untimely deaths from dementia, and the evil corporations (or whatever) that use them for the entertainment of the masses and to make themselves rich, and then spit them out. And I’m sure that many of the NFL elite are selfish money grubbers, but, really, nobody would wind up on a professional football team unless he enjoyed head-butting people. Change my mind.

I’ve also heard that to be knocked unconscious by a blow to the head is to be quite close indeed to death, and that if this happens you are likely to need a substantial amount of recovery time. A concussion is no joke. 

My human skull, so fragile and so strong, the ark of my intellect.  It provides a living vault for my brain, the weird fleshy blob that truly makes me who I am.  Someday, soon in the grand scheme of things, my brain (and yours too) will disappear back in the ether from which it came.  In the meantime, please don’t thump on it.