This is a story I didn't tell publicly for a very long time, for reasons I expect are obvious. But a lot of years have passed, and I don't think I've ever shared the story with anyone who didn't say it was "great" (or some variation thereof). So...what the hell? Here it is. I think it shows Rick Springfield for the exceptional person he is, despite the fact that it begins with a head injury.
At that time, Springfield
had a habit of taking a camera from someone in the crowd, photographing himself
and tossing it back to her. This had
been working out for months and of course the audience loved it. But at the Taste of Minnesota, there was a
barrier about ten feet out from the stage. That meant that when Rick threw the
camera back, it wasn’t the gentle toss we’d all become accustomed to.
Someone reached up to catch it, the camera tipped off her
hand and bounced…right into my forehead. Hard.
The corner caught me above the left eye and immediately my forehead
started to swell.
Thus far, it may be difficult to see how this becomes
another “Why I love Rick Springfield” moment, but here’s what happened next:
Rick saw the camera hit me and he dropped his guitar and
jumped off stage. Remember the barrier that caused all this trouble in the
first place? He climbed over it and was
standing in front of me in seconds. After asking if I was all right and kissing my
forehead, he dispatched someone nearby for ice. Then, he picked up my
then-five-year-old daughter and hugged her, started to turn away and then
stopped and said, “She feels hot. Is she
okay?”
And then, while thousands of people waited patiently (yes,
really) for him to get back on stage and finish the song, he waited for an
answer. It was only after I showed him
that she had plenty of liquids that he turned away again.
To be totally honest, I don’t remember him kissing my
head. After all, I had a
concussion! I’ve heard about it from a
lot of people, though—some of them said I was “lucky”. I’m not going to go that far. I was in a lot of pain and six hours from
home, I had to cancel family portraits we had scheduled for the following week
when my stepchildren were visiting, I couldn’t drive for a couple of weeks and
my poor husband got dirty looks everywhere we went over the vibrant black eye I
developed.
I was, however, very impressed when, about 15 minutes after
the show resumed, Rick walked to the part of the stage directly in front of us
and asked the people standing near me whether I was really okay. I even remember that part.
