Lessons From My (being) Unconscious. (Patreon)

I’ve been knocked unconscious 5 times in my life. I don’t know what that means but each one has taught me something. So get ready boys and girls for some straight up words of wisdom. *cracks knuckles and gets ready to ramble*

The first time I was knocked unconscious I was around 6 years old. It was winter and I was bundling myself up ready for playtime. This consisted of a bright pink puffy coat with a pink fluffy hood, and my all matching hat scarf and gloves set that had Hedwig the owl from Harry Potter on. To paint the picture of how this hat looked, as it is a crucial element of this story, imagine a cream square sticking straight out of my head, I believe there were tassels or pom-poms on each side, and a picture of Hedwig sewn front and centre, a fashionable look that caused my sisters to lovingly nickname me, teabag head. This was simply based on the fact that my hat was a square. Creative. Original. That’s one of the best and worst things about kids, they say what they see. This is also a fabulous description of me as a child, I would create my own mismatched outfits, I would never wear what my mother had laid out for me, in my mind if you try hard enough anything can be a skirt, and so instead of choosing the nice winter beanie, I of course chose the square hat…

At playtime I was involved in a game of dobby scarecrow, a fan favourite amongst my school. I was one of the last to still be free, and the fear of having 4 dobbers was building. I could see all the scarecrows looking at me longingly, yelling for me to run under their arms, ‘save us’. Safe to say, my 6 year old brain could feel the pressure building, and the dobbers were closing in. I flew with my Hedwig hat under some arms, only to fly straight in line with a dobber, I quickly switched direction and ran full pelt in the opposite direction, and my Hedwig hat betrayed me by falling in front of my eyes. Did I stop running? No. The trick was to never stop running. Did I pull the hat away from blocking my eyes? Well I tried, I really did. But the brick wall surrounding the playground had other ideas. I remember seeing the orange brick wall, and then all of a sudden I was in darkness. That’s right…

…I ran head first into a brick wall.

When in the darkness, I genuinely remember seeing small cartoon birds flying around my head. They were blue and tweeting, and only disappeared after I could make out a huge crowd of kids surrounding me and a dinner lady shooing them away. The dizziness made me feel like I was on a teacup ride, except the teacup was spinning on a platform that was spinning on the ground that was spinning on a planet that was spinning in space that is also spinning. I genuinely thought my brain was just being thrown into the walls of my skull repeatedly. Turns out I was sitting completely limp and still. I was being held up in a seated position by another dinner lady.

But you know what, once I had healed from the concussion, I put on my square Hedwig hat, went outside, and played more dobby scarecrow. Because I loved that hat, and I loved playing dobby scarecrow. So, what’s the lesson learnt here? Don’t worry, it’s coming.

The second time I was knocked unconscious I was around 10 years old. I was once again outside at playtime, my friend and I were running around in the quiet area. Rebellious I know. There was no running in the quiet area because it was a small courtyard that was encircled by different class room entrances… and filled with benches. Little did I know, it wasn’t the benches that would be my tripping hazard. My so-called ‘friend’ tripped me, and I fell HARD. My head hit an orange tiled wall, and as I sat on the floor checking my knees, two tiles from the top row fell directly on to my head, leaving me once again unconscious, to be awoken by a dinner lady holding me up. Honestly, the amount of times dinner ladies have saved my life, not all heroes wear capes, you know what I mean.

My ‘friend’ who I would class as an ‘acquaintance’ at this point, had come with me to wait for my mother to pick me up. Whilst waiting, the head teacher asked us what had happened. The acquaintance proceeded to tell the head that I had been running around in the quiet area, and fell over whilst ‘messing around’. At this point I’m thinking, the absolute audacity of this b****, throwing me under the bus as if I had done this to myself. The head teacher asked how she had seen the incident, and she said she had been sitting in the quiet area at the time reading her book. LIES. I tried to explain that this had all been caused by this absolute a**hole of a kid who had tripped me over, and that we had both been playing together in the quiet area, but I was shushed, and told I should be more careful. This was a lesson for not following the rules. What kind of corporal punishment school was I going to? If she was reading a book, then where was this book? Why am I being told off when 10 minutes ago I was unconscious?

Okay, so now for possibly the most important unconscious story of them all. As many of you know, one of my first jobs was at an adventure golf course, whilst evening and weekend shifts were fab as there was always lots to keep busy with, weekday shifts were the opposite. They were so boring, and you were often on your own manning the golf desk and bar because who on earth is going to come and play adventure golf on a weekday at 9 am?

Whilst on one of these shifts, I was talking to our owner, the big boss man, the one you pretended to be busy in front of, and I suddenly couldn’t say full words. My sentence slurred into one noise, and I remember him saying ‘what?’ and looking very confused. I tried to repeat what I was trying to say, thinking my awkward self had just forgotten how to speak for a moment, and of course it came out worse. But then everything else suddenly got worse too. My vision blurred, my right leg suddenly stopped working, I collapsed behind the bar, and on the way down, hit my head on a metal basket full of golf balls.

Okay so imagine this. You have decided to come and play golf on a Wednesday at exactly 10:18am. (I know this is the time as I watched the CCTV back.) You come in and find a 21 year old girl passed out on the floor surrounded by rainbow golf balls, slush syrup that was legit blood red leaking from behind the bar, and an Irish man standing over her and yelling ‘Beth? Beth, are you okay? BETH!’

Don’t worry, I’m alive, and it was nothing serious. But I wish I had the CCTV footage.

My everyday life has always influenced my dreams. I’m used to having a lot of precognitive and premonitory dreams, but whilst unconscious I had my first decision making dream.

Someone very close to me liked me. And I mean like-liked me. But I had a boyfriend. Also I had been watching Rick & Morty. Specifically the episode where the mum, Beth, has to choose between her two kids. They are both hovering in the air being held by some form of orb, and she has to choose which one to save. I believe it’s a very small scene in the Morty’s Mindblowers episode for anybody interested in watching. Moving on from the adult cartoon discussion, in my unconscious dream, I had to choose between my current boyfriend of the time, and the guy who like liked me. There they were, green glowing orbs and all, and I had to choose who I wanted to save. And guess what? I chose the guy who like-liked me. And guess what? The guy was Ande. Judge me all you want but this unconscious dream was in fact the thing that triggered me to break up with my boyfriend and get with my bandmate who is now my husband. I personally think I made a great choice. I could discuss this one decision I made for a long time, go through my whole thought process, explain the ins and outs of why I think this has happened. But ‘that’ isn’t the purpose of this ‘blog’ post so let's move on team.

I had just had the most crucial moment of clarity, only to then wake up to see the tiki bar roof and my high-rate boss panicking in my face. I sat up slowly, and quickly realised I was sitting in sugary slush syrup. Ah, those were the days. A huge lump had already formed out the front of my head, and I just sat there whilst all the muffled noise around me became voices, words, sentences, questions, and quickly became instructions to get me moved to the staff room and call someone to pick me up.

Okay, so my last two stories I’m going to tell together and fast. Together - because they kind of tie together but also don’t tie together, and it’s gotta be fast, because to be quite frank the stories are simply not worthy of anything more.

So fast story time with Beth number one. I was once putting something into my friend's car boot, when they slammed the previously mentioned car boot onto my head. Unintentionally of course, it was just poor timing.)

I was wearing a chunky HIM headband at the time, (you know the band HIM?) and the headband snapped in half, however it provided great protection for my skull. Huzzah! Saved by band merch. I awoke with my face on the gravelly car-park floor with my friend crying ‘I’m so sorry I didn’t mean to do that!’ and my broken HIM headband in two halves lying next to me.

Fast story time with Beth number two. Me and Ande were on our way back from the arcade, where I had won a tiger teddy with big sparkly gold eyes. I loved this tiger. It was adorable. When we got to the car park, someone had parked so close to the passenger side I had to do an awkward shimmy to get into the little 3 door Ford KA, with only 1 arm, because of course I had to keep hold of my brand new adorable tiger. I don’t know if anyone has noticed this with 3 door vehicles, but the doors are HEAVY, like so much heavier than other car doors, and because the car next to us was so close, I couldn’t open the door to the point where it does the little lock thing so it doesn’t swing shut.

You may have guessed what is about to happen, but if not don’t worry I’ll tell you. As I struggled to wiggle into my seat, the door swung shut and hit me in the head. Leaving me with another bump on the head and yet another stamp on my A&E punch card.

So let’s circle back to the very beginning. You want to know what lessons clumsy old me  has learnt from my many concussions…

…Band merch and dinner ladies save lives.

No I’m just kidding, THIS is what I have learnt.

• Never stop doing what you love.
• Some people are d****.
• Be with the people you love.
• Don’t trust cars.

Me and my miss-shapen head would like to advise you to never try any of this at home. I have done the hard work so that you don’t have to! Learn from my mistakes, and also learn that there are much easier ways to learn lessons, like reading this ‘blog’ in the safety of your own home wearing a padded helmet.

Once again, I wish you farewell mother fluffers, until next time.

Bethany.