"It Can Kill Brain Cells" or "Uh, Greg?"

A Family Heirloom Story by Timothy

At dinner, Greg and I were goofing off and making funny faces for Zachary. In one, I held my breath. As my face turned shades of red and purple, Mom noticed and told me not to do that. "Holding your breath for too long is not good for you." she said. "It can kill brain cells." Greg and I stopped goofing around and dinner continued uneventfully.

At bedtime that night though, Gregory and I got silly again and began to make faces in the mirror while brushing our teeth. Melody was there too, all three of us crowded around the sink frothing at the mouth with toothpaste and laughing loudly.

"I don't think this kills brain cells." Greg said with a wry smile and he puffed up his cheeks in a dramatic expression of breath holding. Not just your ordinary breath holding though. He did his best to tense his face to make it all red. He began a slow motion fall away from us to his left. There was a great thud as he hit the floor. I felt for sure he was just joking around, so I kept right on brushing. Dad, having felt the thud from the kitchen just on the other side of the wall, came running in to hear Melody say, "Uh, Greg? At that same moment. Greg began to shake. Dad, ran to him and gathered him up and he quite shaking. He looked up into Dad's face and asked, "What happened?" That is when I realized that Greg wasn't joking around. He had fallen because he passed out. He narrowly missed hitting his head on the tub, but when his shoulder hit the tiled floor there was enough force that a tile broke.

We all felt shaken as we walked out of the bathroom together, Dad holding Gregory up to be sure that there would be no repeat performance. We all made our way to where Mom was working. Melody teased her that she missed all the excitement, and we told her what happened. She had heard the thud too, but because she heard us all giggling and goofing off just before it she figured that we were just being silly in there. She felt bad that she didn't run to investigate. But she was right about holding your breath being a bad idea. It CAN kill brain cells. My brother nearly had a concussion.