Bump On My Head

   I bumped my head last night. I actually bumped it for the second time in a week and a half. We were hooking up a PVR and I was leaning over the TV stand to get a better look when my forehead caught the sharp corner of a shelf. Usually, I don't use this space to talk about my little nicks, sprains, cuts or bruises but bumping my head is different.
   Bumping my head infuriates me, like almost nothing else. More than barking my shin or cutting my finger, bumping my head seems like a personal affront, almost as if the universe has conspired to direct its forces against me, malevolently and violently and personally.
   Last night, had there not been a young and impressionable  lad around, I would have turned the air blue. There was such an urge to vent my anger that it almost felt unhealthy containing it. I'm sure this would surprise most people who know me, generally I am one of the least aggressive and most passive people you are ever going to run into. Nothing much fazes me. Unless I bump my head.

The damage...

   When I bump my head badly what I want to do is flip over the dining room table, yank the fridge out and send it tumbling down to the lower level, rip the doors off the cupboards, throw pots and pans, and toss a lamp or two. Basically, I want to trash the place.
   I have no idea why this is. All sorts of different things can cause me varying amounts of pain without the accompanying urge to fly off into a rage. Why I take so much umbrage with headshots makes little sense.
   There's an expression called "still waters run deep". This is meant to demonstrate that what you see as a personality trait in a person may actually belie a contradictory trait hidden below that person's surface. This may be what's happening with me--outwardly, I'm all calm and gentle while, inwardly, there is this angry beast just waiting for a good enough reason to break free.

...and the cause of the damage

   One of my favourite stories as a kid when I was six or seven was the one my mother would tell to her friends who had stopped by for coffee. She would tell them about the time she was looking out the window and saw me with a cluster of friends on top of me, playfighting. At some point, though, the playfighting gets a little too physical and I suddenly rise up from the bottom of the pile and kids go flying everywhere. Thinking back to that story now, I'm wondering if maybe I got bopped on the head or something, at the bottom of that pile.
   I suspect that there is likely dormant anger in most people, veins which are only tapped under certain circumstances. Mine, obviously, is a blow to the head, although there are circumstances under which this could happen and it would not bother me--getting whacked with a hockey stick or clipped by a tree branch while pruning, as examples. These activities involve varying amounts of risk to your noggin and these risks are self-evident before you begin. It is the random and unexpected head injury which has a whole different feel to it, it's almost as if an inanimate object slapped you on the face, called you "stupid" and then laughed at you. When this happens, all I really want to do is get back at inanimate objects everywhere, even the "innocent" ones.
   Knowing that there is this side to me is a little re-assuring, actually. It would be nice to know, if all of the sudden I was accosted in a dark alley somewhere, that there is a hidden enrgy reserve deep inside which I could then unleash on my attacker(s). With my luck, though, they'd probably hit me in the stomach...