Imagine being run over by a truck that looked something like this when you were six years old. That’s the story I’m going to tell you.

I didn’t get to learn all of life’s lessons in Kindergarten because I didn’t go to Kindergarten. I started with First Grade. According to Google Maps, it was one mile from my house to the school house at the bottom of the hill. I’ll save the story about walking to school for a different post. Sometimes my Dad (your great-grummpa) would take me to school on his way to work in a truck similar to the picture above.

This particular day, I got out of the truck and proceeded to walk around to the front of the truck to cross the street over to the school. My father had thought that I had walked around the back. As you can tell by the picture, this old truck had a pretty high hood and I was shorter than the hood of the truck. Dad couldn’t see me.

As I was walking in front of the truck, Dad started to take off and I felt the truck bump up against me and start pushing on me. I knew what was happening and I had the oddest thought at that moment. I was going to be Superman and push back against and stop that truck. Physics being what it is and Superman being a comic book hero, I lost that battle. Dad drove the truck over me (luckily the truck also had a high clearance and I wasn’t in front of the tires) and continued on to work, not even noticing me lying on the road.

After shaking off the shock, I got up and tried to figure out what to do. I knew that the family of a girl I went to school with lived right next door to the school (which wasn’t open yet), so I went to their door and knocked. I told the mother of the house what had happened and asked if she would call my mom. She asked me if I was alright and I told her that I just had a bump on my right knee. When I pulled up my pants leg to show her, I was greeted with a bunch of blood on what looked like tissue paper.

My mother came to pick me up and take me to the emergency room, but on the way she stopped by where my Dad worked and let him know what had happened (remember, no cell phones). I had to stay in the car so I have no idea what was said; since I was the fifth of six children, maybe they’d been through something like this before; I’ll never know.

At the hospital, I found out I was lucky that whatever grabbed me did not hit and pull my kneecap. They did have to put 9 stitches in my leg though. The scar has gradually faded away over the years, but I can still see a tiny bit of it if you want me to show you.

I’m not really sure that there is any moral to this story, but then again sometimes stories are just that, stories.