Putting this out here in case this is worse than it seems at the moment so people will know what happened to me.

I was walking to the student cafeteria and there was a delivery van partially blocking the sidewalk. He had his hand truck blocking the grassy area next to it so I couldn’t walk around, but there was a gap between the hand truck and the back of his van that I tried to thread. As I was walking behind the van I hard gust of wind came up. It’s become very gusty just now. I bent my head down to keep my hat on my head, which may have saved me from a worse injury. The gust slammed one of the van doors into my head. Hard. No…really hard. I felt it in my teeth. And I fell over.

Someone came up behind me, I don’t even know who because my eyes were shut, and the van driver came out. Both offered assistance, but it’s a thing I reckon with my generation of guys that if you take a hit and you can still get back up you don’t make a big deal out of it. I asked if there was any bleeding. There wasn’t. But it really hurt. I expect there’ll be a knot on it later. I opened my eyes and nothing looked blurry. I hadn’t passed out. I tried standing up and didn’t get dizzy. So I thanked the folks there for offering assistance and told the driver to secure his darn door so it didn’t hit anybody else. Then I walked inside, bought some lunch, and walked back to the Institute.

I asked a co-worker to look at my eyes and tell me they were both dilating the same and she said they were, though one looked more bloodshot than the other. I walked over to my manager’s office and told him what happened, mostly to make sure someone else knew what had happened so if I happen to suddenly pass out people will know it’s probably because I took a pretty hard hit to the head.

At the moment I still feel fine. I think what saved me was bending my head down when the wind came up, and instead of taking it full in the face the door hit me pretty straight on the exact top of my head or close to it. I’ve only taken one harder hit than this in my life, ages ago at the Deep Creek cabin while I was trying to bang some firewood free from ice and a log flipped up and hit me square in the forehead. At least that’s what I’ve always assumed happened because I don’t even remember getting hit. One of my classmates found me sprawled on my back just as I was coming to and we both asked “What Happened?!” at the same time.

[Update…] It’s Friday afternoon as I type this and I seem okay. No ancillary aches and pains, no headache or dizziness. Must still have a pretty thick skull. Still not sure which side of the family to credit that to…