Popcorn with Jesus: Part Two

 

Imagine this sweet child with a hot mess of popcorn massacre all over those perfectly edged bangs.

One of the more prolific memories of my life is the one where I bit my tongue off.

 

I don't know whether I actually remember it or if, because I have heard it a million times, I think I remember  it. I was probably only three or four, but I've heard this story so many times, it's like I was there...

 

My dad always got one of those giant popcorn tins from my Uncle Jack every Christmas. The ones with the three sections: one with caramel covered popcorn, one with cheese covered popcorn, and one with buttered popcorn. I don't know if Grease was on again and I needed to dance like Sandy in painted on black lycra, or if Michael Jackson had just told me it was "Thriller  Night," but I wanted to dance on top of that popcorn tin. Mom, of course, had told Daddy not to let me get on the tin as I was clumsy and it was small, but since she was in the other room and he thought it was hilarious, I, of course, got up on that tin and danced like Michael Jackson at Rydell High.

 

Then I slipped.

Blood went everywhere.

There were blood curdling screams.

 

Maybe it was the curdling (not sure exactly what that is), but Mom came running in, grabbed my face with both her hands, wrenched opened my mouth and gasped. All she saw were pieces of a gnarled up tongue covered in blood. Frantically, she scavenged the floor searching for the other piece of tongue I had bitten off. Scowling at my father, she screamed to get me in the car so they could hurry to the hospital.

 

"But... the tongue!" My dad stood agape, pointing at the floor. 

 

My teenage brother Brooks was in the shower while the popcorn tin dance party was going on, so all he heard was a muffled, "Call Grandma! We have to take Keeley to the hospital!" through the running water.

 

They loaded me up into the Green Bronco and sped toward Albemarle Hospital. It was only about 5 miles from the house, but Daddy was going so fast that the blue lights were soon behind him.
After explaining that his daughter had bitten off her tongue to the very sympathetic cop, we received a police escort to the hospital like we were royalty or the president. It was quite the production up Road Street onto 17 North. 

 

Mom had been holding a rag over my mouth to soak up the blood, and I'm sure I was somewhere between pain and shock, but about the time we pulled into the emergency room loop, I leaned over and looked at my mom and said, "What's going on?"

 

Now, everyone knows you can't talk without a tongue, so I imagine Mom and Daddy were somewhere between relief and embarrassment at this point because they still had to physically get out of the car, thank the cop, and tell the doctor waiting for us with a gurney that those bloody popcorn kernels in my mouth were what appeared to be gnarled tongue bits...so sorry...

 

So, when Sadie said Mum and Grandaddy were in heaven with Jesus eating popcorn the other night, the fact that I had somehow suppressed this memory must have had them throwing angelic popcorn at my head.

This kid is ready to hand jive or moonwalk on a Sit-N-Spin or a popcorn tin!