A Parked Truck, a Shot and a TB Test:
Three Action-Packed Tales of Unconsciousness
by Christoph Meyer

Preface

I’ve been unconscious two, possibly three times. I’m not talking about your average, everyday unconsciousness (i.e. sleep) but the dreaded type of unconsciousness that sneaks up on you in broad, conscious daylight, whacks you on the base of your skull and sends you collapsing awkwardly, helplessly to the ground with a thud. Like the time in elementary school when we were all lined up in the heat for our class picture. The photographer’s camera malfunctioned and we waited and waited in the hotness of some unairconditioned room, packed-in tight for our pose while the photographer doodled around with his broken camera. This happened in Texas in the summer. A kid, whose name and face I can’t recall, just collapsed. One second he was standing and the next second his limbs bent every which way and he just let gravity have its way with him. The teacher said it was “just heat stroke” and I think the camera got fixed so we took our picture without him. But we didn’t need that delicate wilting flower in our class picture anyway; he was weak. Weak like me.

Unfortunately, my tales of unconsciousness are just as weak, wussy and wimpy as that poor kid. I wish I could say that I was pistol-whipped by a mugger while defending my wife and child, or I lost a fistfight by KO, but I’ve never even been in a fight and since I’m in the middle of reading my 3rd or 4th Gandhi biography, I doubt I have what it takes to ever get in a fight. But here are my pansy-assed tales of unconsciousness nonetheless…

I. A Parked Truck

After school, in 2nd or 3rd grade, I would go to a neighbor’s house down the street until one of my parents got home from work. Even though that babysitter’s house was a disgusting mess (imagine shag carpet caked with spilled food) I liked going there because I was friends with the boy who lived there.

My dad stopped by straight from work, still in his Pepsi uniform, to fetch me home. I had my bicycle there (tan, banana-seat, “western” designs, pedal brakes) so I hopped on my bike and left dad, who was still talking to the babysitter, to drive home. It had just rained and the street was wet. As I rode, I watched my front tire rolling over the wet pavement and I noticed something: water would spray up from my tire. Somehow this entranced my 8 year-old mind.

When I peddled faster, even more water sprayed even higher. However, the water from my front tire would just hit my chain, pedals and feet. But, by putting my head between my legs and looking back, I could see the water spraying, unobstructed from my rear tire. I pedaled harder and went faster and the water was flung higher in a beautiful, mesmerizing arc. Why hadn’t I ever noticed this before? I pedaled faster, my head still between my legs. I steered toward the curb where there was more water and even some puddles, where I could really splash up some water. I peddled faster. The water sprayed higher. It was beautiful and

The next thing I remember was my dad standing over me. I was lying prone by the curb in front of a parked car. My bike lay 3 or 4 yards away from me and my dad’s ’82 Dodge rampage was idling in the middle of the street.

Dad helped me up and put my bike in the back of his truck and drove me the less than 100 yards home. I tried to explain to my dad about how cool the water spraying off my back tire was but he didn’t seem to understand. He seemed to think the idea of putting my head between my legs, keeping both eyes glued to the rear tire and peddling as fast as I could was kind of dumb. And it sounded kind of dumb when he put it like that. I asked him not to tell my friends about this and he didn’t. After all, what business does a grown man have shattering the delicate ego of his 8 year-old son?

II. A Shot

Around seven years later…

I was at the doctor for some reason, the most probable of which was an illness. To aid in my recovery from this forgotten illness, I was given a shot in the arm. After the shot, we; my dad, the nurse and I; walked down the hall so that I could be weighed and measured on one of those cool doctor scales with sliding weights. That’s when the blackness crept into the periphery of my vision. I kept walking, not wanting to alert any medical people to this new symptom for fear of more tests. The blackness closed in on all sides until all I could see was a tiny point in the middle of my visual field. Then that point disappeared…

The next thing I remember is coming to sitting on a short stool with my head between my legs. Someone was holding my right wrist between their thumb and forefinger and said, “His pulse is still real low but I think he’s coming around.”

They had me sit around awhile just to make sure I was okay. The nurse said that passing out wasn’t an uncommon reaction to a shot and it was nothing to worry about. I was sitting in one of those four foot high, padded, pull-out bed things that doctors tend to have in their rooms. And this one had a pullover sheet of disposable paper that supposedly kept things clean and germ free but which probably just helped to full up landfills. My dad noticed that the paper was soaked.

“Did you piss in your pants?” he asked.

Instantly, without thinking, I answered with the only possible answer to that question that any continent teenager could say with dignity, “No!”

“Are you sure? That paper you’re sitting on is all wet and your pants look wet. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. It happens all the time when people pass out.”

“No, I’m just sweating a lot.” And I thought this was true because I was dripping with cold sweat.

Soon we were on our way home and I stopped sweating and the sweat had dried everywhere but my pants, which were still soaked. I then realized and accepted that I had indeed wet my pants.

III: A TB Test

There is a third time that I may have passed out. But I’m not sure. This story is really pathetic and happened only a couple of years ago. I was required to get a physical for my new job as a worker in a house for the retarded, uh, I mean mentally-disadvantaged, no, I mean developmentally-challenged, er…um, no I mean retards. Not that I mean that as an insult. It’s just that retards are retards and that’s that.

I had to have a TB test and the nurse gave me an injection on my right forearm. Remembering my past experiences with shots, I was anticipating a light-headed dizziness but nothing happened. But this wasn’t even a real shot. It was technically a shot but the syringe was so small that it looked like a perfect dollhouse miniature of a grown-up syringe. It was like something Barbie and Ken would keep in their Dreamhouse medicine cabinet to shoot up a little H when they throw a big party for all the other Barbies and Kens. And the injection wasn’t even into my blood stream. The shot is just a teeny-weeny subcutaneous injection that made a little lump on my forearm.

After the prick, the nurse left and I waited to see if I felt funny…Nothing happened! At least I can take a cute little TB shot like a real man without fainting. But then the blackness came creeping into the periphery of my vision. I began to sweat. I hunched over and held my head in my hands and waited for it to pass. Everything went black. Although I lost my vision, I’m not sure if I passed out because I stayed sitting up and managed not to wet myself.

When the doctor finally came by, I was still feeling light-headed but had somewhat recovered. I was able to smile, talk, and act like I felt okay even though if I would have been asked to stand up I would have fallen on my face. My hair and shirt were wet with sweat. The doctor asked me a couple of routine questions and did a couple of routine check-up sorta things then said, “Please unbutton your shirt. I’d like to listen to your heart and then you’re done.”

Unbuttoning my shirt was a daunting task. Slowly, I undid all my shirt buttons. I could feel my heart beating like a bass drum in my chest….very…..very…….slowly. The doctor listened for what seemed a long while. My heart was beating so slowly that it was barely keeping me conscious, maybe just 40 beats per minute. I could feel each thud like thunder in my chest then it would pause, silently for way too long…then THUD!

The doctor kept listening from different angles. There was no way that this guy was gonna declare me fit for duty after listening to my barely beating heart. He kept listening. Obviously he was hearing something that concerned him. Finally he took off his stethoscope and left it hanging around his neck, doctor-style. He smiled and said that everything sounded fine and I’m in good health. What a quack. Didn’t they teach him what a heart was supposed to sound like in doctor school?

The worst part about this story is that I now know that the reason I get dizzy is all in my head. I figured at first I was having a reaction to a shot but this shot was too tiny to have any real effect on me. Plus, I’ve had blood drawn and had my finger pricked for cholesterol test and I got woozy at those too. I’m afraid of shots- how pathetic. The one exception is the dentist. Those shots take 10 times as long but they don’t bother me at all. It’s all in my head.

Epilogue

According to what I recall from the parts I read of L. Ron Hubbard’s book, Dyanetics, when one is unconscious, one is susceptible to being imprinted with all sorts of bad, nasty, negative energies that only the miracle of Scientology can cure. I know I read some of Freud’s writings on the unconsciousness about 7 or 8 years ago when I was on a kick of reading psychology books. I’ve now forgotten most of it but I don’t recall ever reading about any positive aspects of the unconscious. The unconscious mind is a world of darkness, depression, nightmares, and repressed emotions and thoughts, not a fount of love and happiness.

Although some learned folks may consider L. Ron and Sigmeund to be equals as charlatans and quacks, I tend to give more weight to Freud- he discovered the netherworlds of the unconscious after all. But perhaps I am confusing “The Unconscious” with “being unconscious.” Regardless, we all know that only bad, bad, yucky-bad things come from the gloomy, surreal world of unconsciousness. And maybe if I indulged in some Scientology therapy or psychotherapy I would discover that these seemingly innocent incidents have left me with a plethora of “issues” and mental scars. Maybe, but probably not. I just wish that my little sissy-pants tales of unconsciousness were in some way related to more manly things like breaking in wild horses, armed robbery, construction work, sports, or a good old-fashioned fist fight.