MMM Day 1: I was a Monster

So I'm making up for days 1 and 2 of MMM after the fact, but setting the publish dates on the days they were supposed to have been written. One of the reasons I wanted to do MMM was because I was a monster for a short while. I'm not being symbolic about the type of person I used to be here. Rather, I'm talking about a physical injury that occurred when I was little.

I had a bed that was three feet off the hardwood floor. In fact, I still have the same bed, and I still sleep in it every night. I'm just better at staying put while I sleep, which I have been ever since the accident. Yes, I fell off the bed when I was little. Not only that, I fell face first into a toy stroller with metal parts which someone had given me as a present before landing on the hardwood floor.

I vaguely remember being shocked out of sleep. I was only 5 years old, so most of my memory of the incident is hazy. The way I remember it, I was still half asleep after it happened, not knowing which way was up. My mother says I woke up fully, and was crying nonstop.

Me, around the time of the accident.
Was I actually a creepy little monster child?
MUAHAHAHAHA!!

The only thing I remember for sure was going into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. I remember being hazy, and stifling a slight scream when I thought I saw a monster in the bathroom. A split second later, I realized that I was looking at my own face in the mirror. I looked like some sort of horror movie monster-child.

I had little streams of blood coming down from the top of my face to the bottom, and my entire face was black and blue. I looked so horrible, in fact, that my mother wouldn't allow me to go back to school for two weeks, despite the fact that I really wanted to go because I was falling behind. She was terrified that they would take me away from her. That had happened to my parents' neighbors, who had a clumsy son who was constantly falling off his bike.

So, my mom was probably right. I did look like someone had beaten the crap out of me. I don't know that anyone would have believed it was a freak accident. Plus, I was always sort of a nerdy weird kid who would rather enjoy conversations and Gin Rummy (my favorite game at the time) with my dad and his buddies than talk about silly stuff I didn't care about with kids my age. The other kids probably thought I was a weird little monster too.