Bitten Tongue

I came close to biting my tongue off one day. I remember it quite vividly. The family was at Seneca Park (on Seneca Lake) one fine day, and us kids (Rita, Dennis, & me, as I recall) were at a small playground in the park. Rita - who was 6 years older than I (and still is) and significantly heavier - and I got on the see saw (or “teeter totter” as we called it) and teetered and tottered on it for awhile until I decided to get off, which I did without informing Rita of my intentions. I, of course, got off when it was tottered in my direction and I was close to the ground, however the weight of Rita on the other side caused the wooden seat to rise up at a great speed and smack me under the chin, causing me to bite my tongue with great force. It hurt, naturally, and I put my hands up to my mouth and made some sort of muffled exclamation. I them looked at my hands to see if there was blood, and lo and behold there was lots of it, which caused me to scream and panic and run as fast as I could to my parents. They assessed the situation, stuffed a towel in my mouth and whisked me off to the hospital emergency room. Turns out there was nothing the doctors could do for my badly bitten tongue. Perhaps nowadays they could. There is still somewhat of a scar on my tongue after all these years.