BONK!
A TBI Story
“I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you.”
“Stop touching me!”
“That’s it!” our dad declares. “Tanner, we are switching seats so you two can finally leave each other alone.”
“But I wasn’t doing anything!”
“You were touching me!”
“No, my finger was right here the whole time,” I say holding my finger less than an inch away from Tore’s shoulder.
Dad: “Switch. NOW.”
I reluctantly get up to switch seats with our dad, but not without poking Tore one more time (for real ;-) this time.
“He touched me again!!” yells Tore.
It’s 2006 and we’re watching the Tigers play the Yankees for the American League Championship at Comerica Park. Tigers are ahead, and Curtis Granderson is up to bat. I don’t really care for baseball (or sports in general TBH), but I’m excited about Granderson because his number is the same as our birth date: 28.
From my new seat, I make a face at Tore who’s still glowering at me. Just then I hear the CRACK of a bat and I look to home plate where Granderson has hit a right hook foul ball that’s drilling right towards us.
We watch as the ball gets closer and closer and closer until it misses us and hits a concrete wall just above us and then heads directly in my direction...
BONK!
It takes a moment for me to realize what’s happened, but it doesn’t take much longer for the pain to shoot through my skull.
Granderson has struck me just above the eye and I feel tears welling up as I try to hold them back.
“Where did the ball go?” asks my mom looking around.
“I’m not sure,” says my dad looking back to home plate.
Just then a friendly stranger behind us leans forward, “I think it hit your kid.”
Mom and dad whip around to see me grabbing my eye where a purple welt is beginning to grow just above it and all around it.
“OH MY GOD WE NEED TO GET HIM TO A HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW!” screams my mom.
“But the game isn’t over yet,” says my dad.
During all of this, Sal is snickering at me, “You get what you deserve.”
Just then, a vigilant park attendant runs over: “Is everything ok?”
“No it is not; my son has been hurt!”
“We have an ER in the park where we can take him.”
“But what if he can’t walk??”
“We’ll get him a wheelchair.”
As promised, a second attendant appears with a wheelchair plus a bag of ice that I press against the purple welt.
From there, the attendants lead us through the park as I begin to feel disorientated while everybody in the crowd around us seem to stare at me getting pushed in my wheelchair.
My mom and I watch the rest of the game on a TV in the Comerica Park ER as my brother and dad leave to watch the end outside.
The Tigers end up victorious and from the safety of the ER’s TV, I watch the players dance on the dugout roof while they pour champagne into the crowd.
After the game, we get dessert at Traffic Jam & Snug in Midtown even though my eye has swollen to twice its size and I can only see out of the other eye.
The next day in school, people ask me what happened and I tell them the truth:
“I got in a fight with a Tiger.”