Hole in my face. Sometime around 1987.

I was 3, and lived in Arizona. For some reason, fruit growing on trees appealed to me that day, as I walked back from a friend’s house (what a different world we lived in back then, a three year old able to walk down the sidewalk unescorted, knowing the neighbors will probably take care of him.) I got to right about across the street from my house, and decided I didn’t want to go in yet. I was too young to realize that a few more minutes in the sun and I’d be red as a plumb. Adventure waits for no child’s skin.

The neighbor across the street had a lime tree. I saw what I wanted, and started up the tree to get it. I don’t know why, I knew they didn’t taste good. I guess I just liked the texture. I got up pretty high, and went for the one that had taken my heart. As per usual, I fell off the tree going for the lime. I can’t recall if I actually got it or not. The neighbor had apparently seen me and my friends attempting to pilfer his hard earned limes earlier that month. If you have ever seen a citrus tree attempting to grow in hard ground, you’ve seen the wandering roots system. Often times the roots will come up off the ground and look like an inchworm static in its woodiness. The neighbor had taken advantage of this and cut the roots off at an angle wherever they did this. In an account from my father, he said that they looked an awful lot like sharpened pungie sticks used in traps in Vietnam. My face fell directly on one. From what I can recall of the incident, the upright stick pierced my cheek, and went into my mouth, and out past my lips. It may have been that it just pierced a little into my face as I fell past. I do recall having dirty wood in my mouth.

I don’t remember how I got off of the damn thing, but after I did, I noticed I was bleeding all over my clothes. Mom would be mad. I walked woozily across the street and knocked on the screen door. Didn’t wanna get this red stuff all over the carpet. I don’t know what my Mom must have thought when she came to the door, it was one of those screen doors with a metal part in the middle. All she would have seen was my body, covered in blood, as my head was being blocked by the metal. Mom rushed to me and Steph came around the corner. She screamed and started crying when she looked at me. That startled me. I started crying then.

In some kind of godsend, there was a plastic surgery conference in town that week, gathering some of the best plastic surgeons from around the country right near our town. My Pops got one of the better ones to stitch my face up. Apparently I was screaming my head off, thinking I looked like some kind of freak.

My Dad threatened the man across the street with his life. The roots got cut down.