There are times in your life when you begin to seriously analyze your existence. For example, when you have close encounters with death.

Just last Saturday night, I like to think I had a close encounter with death. Let me tell you what happened, though, because it is seriously the epitome of scary, weird and random.

My Saturday was going great. I was hanging out with my friends all day outside, playing games and just enjoying the weather. Later on, we borrowed a car and got some dinner. I mean, in all, it was just a perfect day. I even had plans to watch Relay for Life all night, since the weather was perfect and all that.

So night came around, and we were all hanging out in my room. After a while, my friends left for a party, but I was way too tired to go with them-so I stayed in my dorm room and went to bed.

Let me establish right now that I am blessed to have a roommate who stays up all night (you’ll understand in a second, I promise). So my roommate is innocently sitting at his computer at roughly 1:30 in the morning. Apparently (this whole story was given in bits and pieces to me by others because I don’t have a good memory of it) my roommate noticed me slowly slipping off of my bed, in my sleep. I sleep on the top bunk, so it’s roughly a seven-foot drop. Before he could do anything to thwart this train wreck, I was already on my way down from the top bunk, free falling, head-first, straight onto the linoleum tiles.

Splat. Crunch. SPLIT!

I guess I had fallen so hard that guys in adjacent rooms could hear it! My roommate started screaming for help, noticing my flaccid and motionless body lying on the ground, surrounded by blood. My hallmates came to the rescue and called DPS. I had fallen directly on my head, from my top bunk.

DPS officers rushed up to my room, and an ambulance was waiting for me outside. I was taken out on a stretcher, and I even had a neck brace on! I must have looked scary! Also, since I am “tall” I guess it was a bit of a challenge to figure out how to get me in the elevator of Gries when I was on the stretcher.

The rest of the experience is stuff that I don’t really know about. I mean, I know about the stuff I’ve said so far because my friends who witnessed it gave me a firsthand account. But when I was being carted around the hospital, it was just me and the doctors, and it’s not like I have their phone number, you know? It’s not like I’m just going to call them and ask them what I was doing and all that.

Whatever. I ended up getting a bunch of staples in the back of my cranium. And you know what’s extremely weird? I haven’t felt the slightest blemish of pain yet, and I haven’t even taken a Tylenol. Of course, it is weird to reach your hand back to scratch your head, and instead of getting a satisfying scratch, your heart jumps in fear as you realize you almost just plucked a staple out of your head. I can only imagine what would happen if I had accidentally plucked one too many staples out on accident-would my head split open?

There are two things, though, that I have learned from this. First, I understand that I am lucky. I realize that things could have ended up way worse. I am very lucky. Second-and I know I sound corny-I realized how important friends and family are. There really isn’t a better feeling than being half unconscious, lying in a hospital bed, and then suddenly seeing three friends right in front of you, truly concerned about you.

I really can’t emphasize enough how cool it was to kind of snap out of it and notice my friends standing around me. I don’t remember much from that night, but I know that, as soon as I saw my friends, things became memorable. I felt like myself. I was removed from the situation. Instead of being in some freaky, anti-bacterial smelling hospital room, I was just being my stupid self with my friends. In fact, we were being so stupid that the doctor had to come in a couple times to say, “There are people dying out there; can you guys please be quiet?”

Sometimes, in the course of an average day, you tend to forget that people really care about you and hope the best for you always; so, when you’re at your worst nothing heals a lacerated cranium quicker than awesome friends and loving family.