Leaving the theatre, the three of us had huge smiles on our faces. I was happy that I ended up seeing the movie Zombieland with my son and one of his friends  as it  turned out to be much different and way funnier than I had anticipated.

I hadn’t planned on spending the last two hours stuffing my face with popcorn as I watched zombie after zombie get killed –or re-killed I guess you’d call it since they were already dead—in a variety of violently graphic ways. Originally I had dropped my son and his buddy off in front of the theatre around thirty minutes before the movie was scheduled to start. As soon as they had entered the building, I drove away in the direction of my home which is only a few minutes away.

Several seconds after entering my house the phone rang.

“Dad can you come buy our tickets for us? The lady says we’re not old enough” my son asked.

“Sure buddy” I responded quickly, sliding on the one shoe that I had managed to kick off before picking up the phone.

Jumping back into my car I raced back to the theatre. It turned out that I had to stay and watch the movie with the two of them as they were too young to enter with adult accompaniment.  The smile on my son’s face as we headed out into the parking lot through the theatres main door made me happy. His quickly muttered “Thanks Dad for coming with us” was a huge bonus.

Once outside the theatre, I took five steps and stopped. Scanning the huge parking lot, which by this time was completely filled with cars, I struggled to remember where I had parked. I had no memory of walking towards the theatre from a specific direction or something that would help me recall the location of my vehicle. I took another look, this time moving my gaze from left to right at a snail like pace. Then I saw it.

Damn! It was exactly where I had parked it. Immediately in front of the movie theatre, nestled up against the curb a mere twenty feet from where we were currently standing. It was the closest car to the theatre. The only problem was that it wasn’t supposed to be parked there, no car was allowed to park there in fact!

I had stopped the car there two and a half hours ago with the thought that I would quickly run inside, buy the kids their movie tickets and run back and head home. In the midst of the purchase, the confusion of whether they could go in alone or needed me to join them, and the final decision by me to stay and watch the movie, I totally forgot about my illegally parked vehicle.

The two youngsters standing beside slowly turned their heads to look up at me each with a slightly confused look on their faces. I laughed out loud at myself. The four way hazard lights on my car were still flashing bright as we approached it. In the end I really lucked out. Over two hours illegally parked, the car was still there, without any sign of a parking ticket.

My wife and I had a good laugh that night about it all that night, and then my mother in-law had a good laugh, then my brother in-law and a few others did the same as the story was passed around in good fun.

Now that I feel clear headed and pretty much back to normal, I often laugh when I think about some of the funny experiences I had while recovering from post concussion syndrome. The scary truth however is that some athletes dealing with PCS never fully recover and end up living a very difficult life. Hopefully future research will bring improvements in prevention, treatment and general understanding of one of the worst injuries a person can sustain.

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