My Pain, My Body, My Life

I was one of those kids who always got hurt—you know, the one who was always trying to outdo the other guy. Even when I didn’t try, I got hurt. One day, I was on my dirt bike in Garretson Beach. The day was a hot eighty-seven degrees with clear skies. After riding for about three hours, I stopped to get a drink. I put the kickstand down; and while I was walking to my car—bang!—I fell down, got up, and started seeing double. People were running over to help me. They were flying remote-controlled airplanes by the beach, and someone had lost control of a plane. It had crash-landed hard at the back of my head. It was a good thing I hadn’t taken my helmet off; I would have been seriously hurt otherwise. But I sustained an injury to my neck that I can still feel thirty-five years later. That’s just one of my misadventures. Read about more in this book.