One was in high school when a wrestling-mate punched me in the back of the head with his elbow while I was down. We were doing drills in the Mulituse room, the one next to the band rooms, on the mats. I was wearing an ungodly amount of clothes to cut weight. It was near the end of practice. I was sprawled out on the mat and my partner's job was to not let me up and make a 1 point escape. I just sat there until I could see a move out, as he was a much better wrestler than I was. He tried everything including putting his finger up my butt, a favorite move of his that I had expected I would have to endure, to get me to move at all so he could get a move to make. Near the end of the drill session, and I didn’t anticipate this, he just got on top of me and slammed his elbow into the back of my head, as he was so frustrated, and just said ‘Fuck you /u/Balgair!’. Thing is about these concussions, you remember weird things, and not all of it. I usually remembered the first few seconds to minutes afterwards, but then blanks fill it all out, like a floater in your eye, but in your mind. Not static, just, Nothing, and not even emotions too, just calmness at the nothingness. I hope that is what death is like, that it is calm too. So I remembered the first few seconds after the hit. I now know that it was a concussion, it didn’t hurt at all. In fact the only sensation I remember is a chill shiver all the way from my crown of my head down into my lower back, taking about 3 seconds to complete. I don’t remember if I could hear or see or talk in those seconds. Just that shiver of warmth and chill all at once. Then I remember that we were doing spawrl drills, all of us boys in all those sweat pants and sweaters. I remember in that sodium orange arc-lamp lighting of the room, "John" yelling at us to do thing, as he was the student-leader that day. I remember trying to do the drills, and then not being able to. I remember that John was yelling at us all and then yelling at me to do it. And I remember the shame that I felt when John made us do more because I wasn’t doing them up to John's standards. I think we had to do another 1/3rd more. Then it all just goes blank.

I think I have written about this before, but memory is hard. I’ll tell it again though, as another witnessing is probably good too as I don’t think that all the stories will match up 100%. The other time was actually with John too. I think we both got concussions real bad that day. John is a goofy foot. So, when we were doing pipe drills, he was falling the other way from most of the people next to him, like me. A pipe drill is when the other guy has your leg between his legs and has his arms wrapped around your thigh. Then that guys tries to take you down to the mat and pin you. So, typically, you use leverage and then try to swing the guy you are holding onto down. You go to the same side usually, as the foot you are holding, so if you hold the right leg, you then will swing the guy towards that side, so he falls on his back to the right side. Now, John being a lefty, had the opposite led being held, and that meant that he fell to the left and not the right like everyone else. That meant he fell into me. Specifically on this particular drill, his head fell into my head. I only remember the sound that it made, like a pulse of lightening. Just a really low, loud, crack. Maybe like a sheet of metal being thrown into a flat-bed. Then it’s just vignettes, or gifs, loops in my memory that I, to this day, just space out inside of. The chronology is shaky now, again, just different, files?, in my mind that are near that time period. You can put them in whatever order you want. I remember having my head in my hand, face down, I don’t know if I was sitting or standing, I was the one that was screaming, but I wasn’t telling myself to scream. I was listening to my voice scream, I wasn’t in control of myself, maybe my amygdala was, who knows. I don’t remember any sights or feelings outside of my hands and face and my hearing. Just numb otherwise. I remember sitting in the littler back room, I was back on the wall and legs bent upwards. I remember my fingers tingling really bad, like if you let them fall asleep on you for a hour. I remember spots in my vision, all purple and yellow, blue and brown, like a tye-dye shirt. Again, I felt like I was not me, like I was just watching a movie in theater of my eyes and my hands were these gloves of tingle sensations over whomever was remembering these things. I remember telling Coach about all this, like I wasn’t me, and he said ‘Get over it.’ It was so mean, so hateful, but I was numb and not talking, someone else was being talked to and doing the talking. I remember, really vaguely, the other coaches whispering, but I had no sight then. I knew they were talking about me and John, but I’ll never know what they said. I remember telling Coach I wanted to go to the nurse, who was literally the next door down from us, again, no vision in this memory. I remember Coach relenting and sounding exasperated, and I remember tasting vomit but not knowing if it was me or what had happened or why I tasted vomit, I remember finding it interesting that I tasted vomit and nothing more than interest. I remember the trainer, she was a smaller Asian woman, in a blue windbreaker and a white shirt, her black hair pulled back into a pony-tail. She was very tired of talking to me, like we had been talking for a while. She was looking up at Coach, so that means I must have been seated, though I don’t remember feeling like I was. There were noises of people playing and thumping basketballs in the other rooms. I remember she said to Coach ‘he has to go to a hospital’ and that Coach was angry about that, not concerned or worried, but just angry that I had to leave and that I got to skip out on practice, like that I should be punished for this whole affair, not that I should be going to a hospital and be treated like a baby. I remember pulling up to the hospital, in the darkness, the lights were shining up onto the hospital from lights in the ground, giving it a strange glow. I do not remember who drove me there or anything about the hospital at all in any way. I remember going out, some days later, to a Mexican place near Orinda. All I remember was walking into that place with Mom and Dad, but not my siblings. I remember telling myself that I was not going to eat anything so that I could cut weight. I remember a really big sombrero on the wall outside the place. I remember telling Mom years later that I don’t even remember that week or much of that month. I lost 25lbs in water weight later that week in order to make weight for a tournament. I failed at that, but that is yet another story.