Childhood Trauma: Part IV - A Christmas Story

I’m not sure how this traumatic childhood experience is actually manifesting itself (other than a 4^th post in a fantastically pointless series), but I have a scar on my forehead from a ‘mystery’ accident when I was in Kindergarten (I think… memories are hazy due to the screaming, blood, ER visit, and stitches).

Anyway, I used to tell people that I was attacked by an evil wizard named Voldemort. (Yeah, I said it… I ain’t scared.)  But actually, I was sleeping under the Christmas tree ready to catch Santa in the act, and a giant log fell off our fireplace area and it smashed my head in.  Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc. = mortal wounds / near death experiences..

(I promise, it's much more intense/manly/awesome in person.  Blame BlackBerry for not being able to capture the true horror.) 

The real trauma is that my parents boiled this down to an act of God. Yes, as far as my parents were concerned, God in His infinite wisdom was trying to send a message to one young John Boerger: “Santa doesn’t exist and thou must be smoten (smited? smoted?) due to thine heathen beliefs.” What kind of message does that send to a young, impressionable little boy?  

Cut to decades later and I come to find that my brother was playing around the fire and he knocked it off on ‘accident.’  (Clearly, our parents were all hands on deck when it came to supervision).  Granted we were in our early and late twenties when the truth was revealed, but I am even more upset there wasn’t even any sort of retroactive punishment or monetary compensation for my brother’s clear lack of respect for my life. 

Sure I have a cool scar that I’m sure people assume has an awesome back story and I am still fairly above average when it comes to intelligence, but I’m more than certain it did sum sert uv damaag tu my entuhleckt.