So, today is Throwback Thursday and I thought I would tell the story of the time I cracked my head open while doing a waterski pyramid. As most people haven’t done any show skiing, I have a little explaining to do. And as an aside, the pictures I am posting will be a little blurry for two reasons: 1) They were small pictures that I blew up and 2) I try not to post pictures of people who don’t give me their express permission, so I blurred these so you could get the general idea without seeing the other people clearly.

I spent 6 years skiing with a show team in my home town. We were a family oriented team who competed, but were more into creating a fun show for all ages. I wasn’t great on skis myself, but I did a lot of other things like climbing pyramids and doing doubles routines along with land acts like acting and dancing.

So one year we were headed to tournament. We had a fun little show where I was one of the main actors in the skits and we had a few difficult acts we were really working on. One was called a pre-built pyramid.

Most of the time, when you start a pyramid act, you start off like this:

The climbers sit on the bases shoulders while the bases sit on the dock. After everyone is up and skiing, the climbers stand up and start to build up the pyramid.

We had been working hard on doing a pre-built pyramid, which starts like this:

This was the beginning of it all. We start off already built up into a pyramid. Anyways, my sister was also in this act. I was a little nervous because we hadn’t really nailed it yet in practice. But I figured we could do it.

So we set up on the dock and got ourselves in place. The boat started to pull away from the dock and our ropes tightened up.

Right away, something definitely didn’t go right. As you can see, we are all still holding on tight because sometimes, you can pull these things out even with a bobble. I remember thinking we could maybe be successful with this attempt. Spoiler alert: we weren’t.

This is the last picture in the series. As I went down, the ski came up and hit me in the head. I felt it hit and it hurt, but I was focused on the fact that I would have to swim to shore as fast as possible because I was supposed to act in the skit directly after this. So as I came out of the water, I waved my arm in the air, which was the sign you give when you fall to let people know you are okay.

My sister came up out of the water and shouted “Is everyone okay?” As I turned to tell her I was okay, she got the most horrified look on her face and started screaming and crying at me. Unbeknownst to me, the ski had split an inch wide gash on my forehead. I don’t have a picture, but I’ve been told I looked like Carrie. When you have a head wound and you are in the water, it looks like gallons of blood are draining out of your face.

At this point, I’m told I did a dramatic slow turn towards the audience, which I’m sure was absolutely terrifying as blood streamed down my face. Thankfully, the base I had been standing on grabbed me and laid me down so I was floating on the water as someone else made an “X” sign with their arms to let everyone know someone was hurt.

Normally, I do pretty well in emergency situations. But after thinking I wasn’t hurt and then having my sister scream and start sobbing in my face, I was extremely disoriented. At this point, things started happening really fast. The other skiers were swimming me to shore and one of the judges came running. (We call him Straw Hat Guy because every year he wears the same hat.)

So Straw Hat Guy runs into the shallow water and grabs me by the arms and as he is dragging me to shore keeps yelling “Can you walk? Can you walk?” and I’m totally confused and I’m just saying “I think so,” because I’m not sure if I can or not. I didn’t even know I was injured until someone told me! I also have horrible vision and I ski without glasses or contacts, so nothing was in focus.

I’m able to walk to the ambulance and they get me cleaned up and put a bandage on me. It mostly stopped bleeding, so they said I could wait until we got back to my hometown to go into the hospital because we were several hours away at that point.

So after the show was over, we packed up and drove back to my hometown and after we dropped the rest of the family at home, we went to the emergency room so I could get my head glued back together.

My mom and I ended up watching “Let’s Make a Deal” in the emergency room at 2 am next to a convict handcuffed to the bed so they could glue the inch wide gash on my forehead together. In my family, that is just a normal thing that happens to us.

By the way, a few weeks later when I was cleared to ski and go in the water again, we tried the pyramid again. As I stood on the base’s shoulders, my entire body was literally shaking. Like shaking to the point that people were asking if I actually wanted to do it. But I knew that if I didn’t do it now, I wouldn’t ever do it again. As the ropes started to tighten, I felt like I was going to vomit. But we made it!

I’m screaming with joy in this picture because I conquered the fear and we did it!

I still have a scar on my forehead from where the ski hit me. It is the only part of my forehead that no longer moves.