Barbarian Head Bashing

8 years ago, I was pregnant with WildBoy.  Barbarian pregnancies are a little more... um, volatile... than usual pregnancies.  Or, at least mine was.  At this time, I decided to conduct a rage experiment, where I would test my ability to punch, kick, and headbutt the walls of a house.

Just kidding.  I didn't consciously decide anything.  But, it did end up being an experiment.

(Hmmmm.... this experiment is pure folly.)

You see, I was very angry at VikingDad.  In my pregnant Barbarian mind, he was being a royal asshole.  And this had been building for some time.  Before I got pregnant, I was working a very physically demanding job at a local dairy farm.  I would carry bales of hay, climb ladders into hay lofts, operate the straw chopper, and herd the cattle both into and from the milking area.  In order to herd the cattle, I would have to prod them through tight chutes (called traffic lanes, appropriately enough).  In order to do that, I would have to be in the lane with the cattle.  They would often step on my feet (I wore thick boots so it wasn't too big of a deal), but they would also barge past me, oftentimes pinning me between their giant bulk and the wall of the lane.  I could avoid this, but I would basically have to crawl partially up the walls of the lane in order to maneuver, and my balance was getting a bit off, so that was a precarious thing to do at the time.

(It looked a little like this except the lane was made out of steel gates and there were two lanes with cattle going either way and walls on the outside, so I couldn't just stand outside the lane and move the cattle.)

I was a bit concerned with all of that, being pregnant and all.  The other concern I had at that job was the bull.

(Moo, bitch)

Bulls are really fucking dangerous.  They don't want you to take their cows, even just to get milked, so they will often charge you when you try.  And how do you defend against a charging bull?  Well, I had a pitchfork.  I didn't like my chances.

(Bring it on.  Oh yeah, I have a baby in my tummy.  Fuck.)

So one day, I had enough.  I told the owner that I had to quit- I thought the job was getting too dangerous to do while pregnant.  And I didn't tell VikingDad about it until after I quit.

He wasn't mad at me for quitting, but VikingDad is on the Autism spectrum... we didn't know this at the time, so I didn't understand what the big deal was.  I was getting unemployment benefits since I had to quit due to a medical safety related thing.  So, what's the big deal, right?  Well, people on the Autism spectrum need advance notice of any change that's happening, if at all possible.  They don't deal with sudden changes well.  So VikingDad was being particularly surly to me, and I was a raging ball of hormonal chaos.

(A fair representation of how I looked and felt when I was pregnant on a good day.)
A surly, Autistic Viking, and an angry, pregnant Barbarian.  Sounds like peace and harmony, right?

(Peace out, man)

Well, the end result of that was, one day when we were visiting VikingDad's parents, he did something I thought was douche-y, and I went berserk.

(First, I was thinking, "You did not seriously do that, bitch!")

(Then I yelled, "Fuck you!")

(Then I threw whatever was in my hands at him.  I think it was a pen.)

(Then I started punching and kicking the wall.)

I stormed off, and punched the wall.  Then I went downstairs and kicked the wall.

(I was really quite angry)

Then I bashed my head against the wall.  Over and over and over.  Until I calmed down.

(It's quite therapeutic.)

Everyone else was sitting upstairs going, "What the fuck?"

(Bitches be crazy.)

So, after I calmed down a bit, I apologized to VikingDad's parents.  (They eventually patched up their walls.)  VikingDad and I made amends, and I fell into an exhausted sleep.

The next day, I surveyed the damage.  The punches went through the drywall.  The kick was against a door frame, if I remember correctly.  And my head bashing was against a post, so it didn't go through the wall, but made a sizeable head-shaped dent in it.  And the damage to myself?  My knuckles and hands were sore, my foot was all bruised up.  But my head?  Fit as a fiddle.

(I'm a motherfucking pachycephalosaur.)

I was a little bit surprised at this.  I had less resistance with my punches, due to having punched through flimsy drywall and not a friggin wall post.  I probably kicked a corner in the door frame, so I'm not surprised that hurt in the morning.  But I was super surprised that, despite repeatedly bashing a bowl shaped dent into a wall post, my head didn't even feel sore.  Huh.  That's useful information.

So remember, kids: if you ever want to do a hell of a lot of damage to other things but don't want to get hurt yourself, use your head to bash it to a pulp.