hi i'm barbara and this is dave hi barbara how are you happy birthday
thank you very much it's my diamond jubilee yes it is yes it is by the way uh thank you
very much for having me on the show uh i'll be brief because i know you have other guests
and i'm uh you weren't here last time and i i hope you're feeling much better i wasn't sick okay
anyway uh i was told you were ill no i wasn't sick so you have a little story you're going
to tell me well not a little story it's kind of an epic and it's a big story in my life because
it was a day of firsts uh first time i'd ever been knocked unconscious uh and first time i
have ridden in an ambulance and first for my son who also was in the ambulance with me now having
said all of that it's sort of like oh my god what happened to dave yeah well uh here i am and uh
it's a pretty good story harry and i last summer because he's at an age where he's thinking about
going to college so we would go visit colleges and uh it was great fun because they were all
just road trips harry and me out loose running around having fun and i can remember on this
particular day as we left to go on this road trip uh my wife and harry's mother same person
said are are you two taking this seriously and we said oh come on uh so anyway we're we're uh here
is the plan we drive to the campus we circle the campus we find a place to park centrally located
harry goes his way i go my way and harry says i don't want to see you if you see me don't look at
me and i said i got it i got it because he doesn't want it dopey old dad there on campus with the kid
sure makes perfect sense to me so harry goes looking around the campus i go into the campus
village and uh they look guess what was there warby parker do you know why they call it warby
parker i don't it's it's the name of a guy invoked in some beat literature the name of
the author i can't recall at this moment anyway so i'm always in the market for glasses sure
uh wait a minute yeah i couldn't i couldn't wait an hour at lens crafters all right so and there's
a starbucks so i love coffee because as you know without the caffeine i have no personality right
okay so uh now on this particular campus there's these enormous behemoth electric scooters big huge
and they're everywhere as though dropped from space so now i'm out shopping and i wait for
an hour and a half two hours and i think okay it's time to go meet my son back at the car
in this hand i have the warby parker purchase and in this hand i have a scalding hot coffee and i'm
walking purposefully because i know i'm late i don't want harry to wonder where the hell dad is
right and out of nowhere i fall full force and hit my face on the cement sidewalk broke the fall with
my face and i saw this white flash in my head and that was it and um i'm out cold i don't know how
long i was out i i finally come to and the first thought i have is harry is gonna be so pissed off
so now there's an uh an ellipse of a half a dozen people good samaritan standing around me people i
don't know and and everyone's looking at an old man bleeding to death and they each said are are
you okay and of course lying oh you're fine no that no that was nothing you got to see me in the
shower well yeah so and now comes a fire truck and one of these good-hearted people is phone
to get the fire truck to come and a guy hops out of the fire truck and he said
are you okay and again lying i said sure what could be wrong here pool of blood i'm fine
and so he goes back to the truck and i hear him call and he said yeah uh we have a man
in his 70s who fell on the sidewalk and was knocked out and i thought to myself
wow that poor bathroom and then it turned out it was daddy okay so now the fire truck leaves
next comes an ambulance again with the siren and these guys are on me and they load me on the
the brace uh they put me on the thing and shove me into the back of the ambulance
they get get an iv in me and one of the good samaritans has gathered up my belongings my
warby parker glasses hey maybe i'll get some you know yeah and uh some other belongings that hit
the deck when i hit the deck so they hand those to the ambulance guys they put me in the ambulance
and uh now they got me on a neck brace and they're trying to staunch the blood flow and
i i said i you guy uh i said are you protesting or are you out of it oh no you're playing along
when they got you locked into an ambulance you're not yeah hey what's going on here why you no no
you're if you're full on i said you know the uh i don't know where you guys are about to take me
but my son is somewhere in the neighborhood we we have to oh it's all right what's he look like
i said he looks like every other kid on campus oh we'll find him i i can't protest so now
we're in the ambulance and the the guy the emergency worker is trying to see if i'm
have damaged my brain and this was right after the uh evacuation from afghanistan and he says to me
what what do you think about that afghanistan deal and i'm thinking well this is an unusual question
under the circumstances and then i realized it was a brain check so i gave him my uh thoughtful uh
piece on afghanistan which amounted to nothing essentially
and we're now driving around looking for my son in an ambulance with the lights flashing
and the next thing i know the back doors open up and harry gets in the ambulance and i thought
oh i said harry i am so sorry it's all right i said well how did how did you get here well the
guy said is your name harry and i said yeah and they said well we got your dad in the back and uh
i said what happened and the guy says well he hit his head and i said oh he'll be all right
so now he's he and i go to the emergency room together and the first thing i say to here is
don't tell your mother okay so we go to the emergency at the rhode island hospital
and it's crowded and there they they get us and they take care of us and they clean me up
and they they scanned my brain and then they gave me an x-ray and uh i i was the other
guy flossed my teeth wow yeah full surface oh for white glove treatment and and so everything's fine
oh and then they stitched me up 180 stitches right in 180 180 stitches wow yeah uh and
so we're in there for like two hours and now i put my clothes back on and i'm sopped in blood
so we got to go home now you had to take off all your clothes i don't know if you had to
you know what i'm saying yeah
so we got to go home now so i don't want to see the blood-soaked outfit so i put my clothes on
backward and so the blood's all in the in the back now and i said harry when we get home don't
tell your mother what happened so we get out of the car we walk into the house and harry says oh
mom dad fell and hit his head and had to go to the hospital bang zoom sure yeah so that was the story
and concussion i'm certain there was a concussion but no fractures of the skull uh no cognitive
although for a long time and this is the truth i couldn't remember the name of eric clapton
why did you ask well i just couldn't i kept thinking leila layla hmm and i couldn't remember
eric clapton's name so that's how i self-diagnose the concussion interesting yeah so that's my story
and um thank you to the folks at the rhode island hospital emergency award uh because
they were quite busy and had other things to do besides uh treat the likes of me it's a pretty
good birthday story it's a great story and it's a story that harry and i uh will have forever
and it was i'm telling you it was it was i know it doesn't sound that way but it was nothing but fun
yeah no it doesn't tell me fun and next week i understand mr beast will be on your
show oh really so we'll be happy to see that sure yeah all right nice having you thank you very much