The Rabbit Head

THE RABBIT HEAD

In the 1990's our family was "blessed" with an ongoing parade of teenage drivers. We discovered that VW Rabbits were just the ticket for us. They could be bought for just a few hundred bucks and Dick knew how to fix whatever ailed them. Teenage driver accidents became quite common place for us. But not to worry - there was probably another Rabbit just around the corner, and most likely it needed a part that Dick had salvaged from one of the previously wrecked Rabbits. We probably could have opened our own Rabbit parts store. A few times we even made money on them. After having made only one payment for collision insurance, one of our guys would wreck the poor thing, and lo and behold, the insurance payment would be more than we had just paid for it!

One morning in September 1996 I was hurriedly getting ready to leave for school, when I remembered I needed to run to the basement to get a frozen lunch from the freezer to take with me. I ran down the basement stairs, yanked the freezer door open, and *#%?!~^*#@*! I found myself on the floor in front of the open freezer door, realizing that something tremendously heavy had fallen onto my head. I was dazed and couldn't even think what to do. There was this huge thing on the floor in front of me. I never knew that freezer motors were inside the freezer, but that's the only thing I could imagine it was. I started to cry out for help, and began crawling toward the stairs. I heard Sam come pounding down the stairs to the kitchen above me yelling, "Mom, what's wrong??!!" He helped me to get up the stairs to the kitchen table so I could call Dick.

Poor Dick. As soon as I managed to tell him that something big had just fallen onto my head when I yanked the freezer door open, he immediately knew what a terrible thing he had just done the evening before. He had been replacing the stove pipe for our coal stove, which was a very dirty, dusty job. There had been a cylinder head from a Rabbit down there and he had decided to move it away from the dirty job he was doing. SO he put it on top of the upright freezer, never imagining that it would come falling down on someone.

He took me to the doctor's office where they determined that I was not having a concussion, but I did need several stitches. They advised me to take the day off from school, which I had no problem obeying. I had a MAJOR head ache!

A few years later I needed to obtain a few years of my medical history in order to qualify for a cheaper premium on my life insurance. My doctor's office got everything copied for me, and during a break in my schedule one day, I went to pick them up. As I got back into my car I took a quick glance at the first page. The very first entry was dated September 27, 1996. The first sentence read:

"Was trying to get something out of the freezer in the basement and a head from a rabbit which weighs about 25 pounds fell out on her head."

I howled laughing the whole way back to school. I could just picture the transcriptionist who had listened to the doctor's explanation on the little tape recorder and then had faithfully typed it onto paper. What ever must she have been thinking? A rabbit head that weighed 25 pounds??? That was one BIG rabbit!! And what in the heck was it doing in this lady's freezer anyway???

For the record: we weighed it, and it weighed 33 pounds. I obviously have a very hard head.