Ban Sand Shovels

Forget about gun control, here is a good reason to ban sand shovels. Adding to my Guinness record for bodily damage, I am told (for reasons that will become obvious, my memory is a bit fuzzy) that when I was around 2-years-old I was playing out back in the sandbox with my yellow metal sand shovel and pail, and I was soon joined by my neighbor, Tommy, who was several years older than me and allegedly quite spoiled. Anyway, I apparently became intrigued by what was going on next door, and stepped out of the sandbox to get a better look. My foot got wedged between the fence and the sideboards causing me to lose my balance and fall backwards into the box. I was completely trapped and wasn't able to figure out a means of escape, and so I did what any kid that age would do in similar circumstances: I began to wail for my mommy. This evidently disturbed Tommy, and instead of helping me, he began to pummel my head with the shovel. I guess he thought that by inflicting great pain it would silence me. Unfortunately for both of us, the opposite occurred, and the more he struck me, the more intensely I wailed, and the more powerfully Tommy swung away. It wasn't long thereafter that blessedly I began to lose consciousness.  As it was, the back yard was quite large and my mother was in the far end of the house nursing my younger brother and couldn't hear my screams. Tommy's mother was in her house and didn't hear me either, but she happened to look out the kitchen window and noticed her son's arm repeatedly flailing, and so she came running to investigate and was able to stop the beating. Apparently, I was revived, my mother was alerted, and I was taken to our family doctor for treatment. As the doctor began to wipe the blood from my mangled head, he was understandably outraged and believed that something should be done about Tommy. I don't know if anything ever was done, but I eventually recovered as best as could be expected. Perhaps my head trauma explains, in part, why up until about the middle of grade school, my parents thought I was mentally retarded. Here is a picture of the sandbox.

 Here is the back yard with the sandbox in the distance beyond the swing set.: