“See you guys on the other side,” “Tell Ma I loved her,” “I tried to be good.. really.. I did,”  “Elizabeth, Elizabeth… I’m coming to join ya!,”  all these messages and more escaped me as darkness moved quickly through my consciousness until a dim ray of light was left, only to be quickly snuffed out.  Dramatic?  Yes, sure was.

“Get yer arse off the ground and quick screwing around,” Pappy hollered.

“I thought he was dead for sure,” my Mom responded.

Slowly, darkness was pushed aside by these agitated sounds.  “Whew, I am alive,” my brain screamed out.

“Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, you passed out,” loving brothers squealed.

“Dang, sure wish I was dead again,” brain sniveled.

What made me relive these dark days?   Well, it came from a little event involving my son.  He was on a tour the other day while attending a camp that explored the wonders of animals.  One stop was to a surgical room where the Vet described different sizes of needles used during his surgical procedures.

“Well Dad, it was like this,” my son starts, “The room was small and there were about 25 of us in it.  They were all breathing heavy, thus hogging all the oxygen in the surgery area.  When the oxygen was nearly depleted, there was not enough for me and my brain decided to pass out.”

“Hmmm,” I pondered.  “Jeez, the poor kid has something wrong with him,” the boys mom and I agreed.  Then it hit me, “Son, when did you pass out?”  I asked,.  “Right after the Vet talked about the needles,” he said.

“Ah ha!! Yes, of course.  The poor boys head went into overdrive after he thought of needles pushing through flesh and he dropped like a hot rock,” I concluded.  Genetics… yep, the poor boy has my pass-out gene.

The dramatic story today begins with my first pass-out experience and happened when our family joined up with many relatives for a camping adventure.  During our family bonding week it seemed that there was an abundance of time to play by yourself.  Innocently enough, it was during one of these alone times when I started using a pocket knife to carve my name into a very tough Oak tree.  The bark and fibers were like steel and required me to grip the handle firmly and push the tip into the trees layers.  I ended up pushing too hard and the knife closed scissor-like on my knuckles.  The right index finger took the brunt of the slashing and carved a nice slice to the bone.  This event happened in a split second so it took a moment for my mind to register everything.              First….pain; second…bone viewing; third…. blood; fourth….My first journey to the unknown where the lights went out, knees gave way, and I hovered angel like over my crumpled body strewn haphazardly on the forest floor.

“Look at him!!!!, Now he’s crying too,” brothers Gump and Bishop sympathetically added.

Evidently, passing out makes you a wuss and a perfect target for ridicule.  Ghaaa, the shame of it all…  Days, weeks, and years afterward I heard it over and over… “Remember that time Billy passed out?”  “Dropped like a sack of potatoes he did,” “Heh, heh, heh.”

Women have it great in this aspect.  They don’t ‘pass out’, they ‘faint’.

Terrible, surprising news hits the home front?  Down they go, and it’s acceptable.  “Poor thing, give her some air and bring some water,” the witnesses soothingly quip.

Not fair, not right, and sexist is my assessment on this.  Jeez, my brothers were already  throwing dirt on me and arguing over who was going to get my bike.

That wasn’t my only time passing out, I have had plenty of episodes since then.  Once, at the age of 10 or so, I had to go to the dentist.  He was a big man with cucumber size fingers and cigarette breath.  The man was also a retired Army dentist who didn’t believe in anesthetics.  No Lie.

This guy sucked the dentistry insurance allotment up very quickly from our family.  Luckily for him, my brothers and I drank Kool Aid with reckless abandon and the pure sugar loved chewing on our teeth to give us cavities.

Gallon of water, cup of sugar, simple, yet tasty concoction.  Especially Green.  I’m pretty sure it was called Lemon Lime or something but was referred simply as ‘Green,’  in our household.  “Red blows, make Green, dumb arse” my brothers would yell at me.

Sorry, back to the dentist.  He was kinda smart in some ways because a treat came after our treatment.  Hmmm… ‘Treat– Treatment’… might be something to that.  Anyway, a long, rubber alligator or spider was promised if we were ‘good’ while he was drilling for silver.  Not quite sure what his definition of ‘good’ was, so I would try to lay there without squirming, crying, biting, spitting, etc.  Passing out was categorized as ‘bad’ in my brain so when the darkness swept over the landscape of consciousness when he drilled into a nerve, I tried to suppress it for fear of not getting my alligator.  Too late…. I was gone hovering again.

The dentist seemed to like me this way, I surmised while floating above him and the lifeless me.

Tooth smoke from the grinding and drilling finally cleared, so he poked, (revived) me and gave up one of his gators for being ‘good’.

Sidenote…. this rubber alligator was later used by a still non-confessing brother who put it in with my goldfish and subsequently killed them.

Gotta give a blood draw out of my right arm?  Hover Hover…  Needle from new dentist jabbing into my jaw bone?  Darkness, then Hover….  Flu shot?  Quick darkness but no Hover..

The most recent attack on my conscious came several years ago while I was a supervisor working the night shift at Steelcase.

Our workload required us to endure a lot of overtime and I would often help out the crew in the making of desktops used in office furniture.  One of the last steps in this process was to trim off the excess edgebanding by using a custom made, really sharp knife.

My head wasn’t entirely in the game as I trimmed off the edgebanding, and as a result, the knife slipped, then sliced a nice cut deep into my right thumb.

“Ok, that hurt and will bleed, but no biggie,” was my thought as I quickly wrapped it with a clean towel and finished trimming the top.

It was the end of our shift and the whole crew was cleaning while I completed the schedule.  About ten minutes after cutting my thumb, a young lady from our team came over to say good night and quickly saw blood on the floor and the towel wrapping my thumb.

“Whadja do?,  Yer bleeding…let me look at how bad it is,” she says.  “I’m fine, just a little cut is all,” says me.  “Lemme see, just to make sure,” she asks again.

This is the moment where my credibility as a Supervisor and a Man quickly takes its turn Southbound.

“OK….See?  Not so bad,” I say while slowly unwrapping the towel.  I spoke too soon since when the towel opened, it revealed the now clotting blood bloop over to one side of my digit.

I felt IT coming on fast when the wound was exposed.  “Easy Billie, it’s just blood, it doesn’t hurt,” my conscious screams.

The pass out Gene was exercising its dominance and started to suck the whole building down into the great abyss.  “Bill!!!  ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?!!” screams the 105 lb. woman.

ITS taking me fast and there’s no stopping IT while I try to steady myself.  The mouth is now paralyzed and I can’t talk, knees then become wiggly.

“Just go to sleep,” dominant pass-out gene murmurs, “don’t try to fight IT, you can’t.”  The concrete floor is approaching and I am rendered paralyzed-like again.

“HELP, HELP!!!!”…the worker screams as she barely cushions my descent to the floor.  “He would have smashed his flippin’ head open if I hadn’t been here,” is what I heard as consciousness comes back.

“Just relax Bill, we called the paramedics,” the lead man says as I look up to see a circle of heads, like a halo, all straining to get a good look at my passed-outedness.   The concerned look from the crew is quickly replaced by the ‘holding back a good laugh look’  as two crew members put my arms around their shoulders and carry/drag me to the break room.

“I’m fine, really.”  was my proclamation to the newly arriving paramedic.  “Nope…Ya gotta go downtown to the hospital and get some stitches and we called a cab to bring you,”  the EMT says.  “What?? A cab?, I can drive,” says me. “Nope…Company policy, now get going.”

It’s a Saturday night and almost 2:00 A.M. as I sit in the packed E.R. waiting room with quite a cast of characters.  Finally, an hour later, a smiling nurse comes to get me and continues smiling as I sum the nights events leading up to my mishap.  She is still smiling while explaining that she needs to ‘numb up the area’ with her syringe of numb potion.  “It’s gonna hurt too, since its basically skin on bone where I have to inject you,”

“Go ahead, how much worse can it get?” I say.  The smiling nurse is evidently governed by the Devil as she starts the needle injections into my tender thumb.  “How ya holding up?”

Hover, Hover, Hover, as I look down on my lifeless body and the smiling nurse.