I was involved in a conversation, recently, about kids. "We protect our kids too much these days,"a friend was saying. "When I was a kid we had to learn by making mistakes, falling out of trees, scraping our knees on the pavement when we were learning to ride a bike."
I found my self nodding in agreement, thinking about all the scrapes, injuries, bruises, broken body parts, black eyes, etc, that I lived through while growing up.
Then a thought occured to me; is it possible, among all the injuries, among all the times I knocked my head against walls, floors, book shelves (more on that later), that I suffered TOO MANY injuries as a child? Did I hit my head on too many things? Am I permanently damaged? Is it pssible that all the head trauma I suffered as a child has resulted in a grown up me that is, well, damaged?
Hm, I thought, before standing up and bumping my head into a book shelf.
My childhood was non-stop injuries.
I fell off a table once, landing smack onto a concrete floor with the back of my head. A nice little bump lasted for days. It hurt, yes, and in the moment I wanted nothing but my mom's reassuring care. A few hours later, though, I was proud of the injury and could not stop telling everyone the story; "I fell straight off the table and hit my head. Here! Feel the bump! Pretty good, huh?"
As a middle schooler I was taking time away from Track practice, one afternoon, to jump, spin, and twist onto a high jump landing mat - one of those big cushions that high jumpers land on - doing pretty cool twists during the jump before landing safely on the big cushion.
The only problem? The high jump mat was not out at the high jump area. It was stored next to a building with brick walls. We (myself and a couple other middle schoolers) were jumping from a three foot ledge with a few feet to twist before landing on the mat.
Then it happend. I jumped, twisted, tried an even more cool twist than usual - one more rotation, I thought, this will be so cool - and as I landed, slightly out of control, my face planted itself smack into the brick wall.
"Aaaah! Gaawd!" I screamed. running away in no particular direction holding my face, certain that I had broken something.
Several people came to my aide. nothing was bleeding, but a nice big knot was swelling up right at the corner above my eye.
For the next several days my black and purple eye was the talk of the classroom.
When I got on the school bus with my sister Becky the next morning, the bus driver did a double take and asked, "What happened to you?"
"She punched me," I said, laughing, pointing at Becky.
Then there was the time I was running up some stairs, The stairway had a book shelf jutting out from the wall right when you reached the landing at the top of the stairway.
"Smack!"
The bookshelf nearly broke the top of my head open. I was almost knocked out for a second before looking around wondering what exactly had happened.
I survived all these injuries. plus many more - too many to include in this short recollection.
So, yes, I still agree that kids these days need to be a little tougher. They need to know what pain and difficulty are, and how to survive these moments. We DO over-protect our kids.
But...there's a limit. Why was I standing on a table above a concrete floor? Why was I running up the stairs without regard for the obvious danger at the top? Why was I doing summersaults in the air next to a brick wall?
Was my brain permenetly damaged by all the head trauma I suffered?
Does this explain so much about me?
Hm...
Well, there's nothing to do about it now. Life goes on. Learn by doing, I guess. Now,where did I put my keys?
Peter Wick
February 14, 2026
