I'm a confirmed headbanger, but not in the heavy metal sense

I hit my head on stuff a lot.

Getting in and out of my car, walking past a protruding shelf, trying to adjust the weight on a machine at the gym. Whatever the activity, I manage to bang my noggin on some inanimate object (and occasionally animate objects like, say, other humans) at least once a week.

The result is often a gash or welt around my scalp that my barber Tom will notice and ask, "What happened there?"

So I have to relate the story to him, and it's usually embarrassing.

There are two possible explanations for my tendency toward inadvertent cranial smashing:

(1) MY HEAD IS LARGE: It's not freakishly large, but it's big. I remember when I played football having the second-biggest helmet on the team. The only person with a larger helmet was Jermaine Porter, and he was half a foot taller and 60 pounds heavier than me.

(2) I AM NOT ESPECIALLY COORDINATED: This feels more likely. Quite often, my sense of where my body is in space does not align well with the reality of where it actually is. I'll be striding through the house thinking, "I have plenty of clearance to get past the refrigerator!" Then BANG, the refrigerator will jump out and painfully smack me in the head.

Whatever the cause, I blame continuous skull thumping for my failing memory. It has nothing at to do with the fact I'm almost 55 years old and everything to do with the mini-concussions I sustain each week.

Somehow, that part of it at least makes me feel better.