Hard Lesson to Learn

Two days later and my head still hurts.

I mentioned the other day that my husband was unable to do his normal chore of mowing this weekend because of an incident. On Saturday, I sent my husband off to the store, with my eldest, to get milk, bread, and a few other items. They seemed to be gone an unusually long time, but I didn't think a whole lot of it. Finally, when I was putting laundry away in my children's room I heard the door slam. My eldest came running down the hall, tears streaming, pant legs blackened. "Mama, Daddy and I had an accident." Since she was standing in front of me, looking slightly disheveled, I wasn't sure what type of accident it had been. "Okay. What happened?" She said, "Daddy and I were on the grocery cart racing through the parking lot, and we lost control." I imagined the cart hitting the side of my van, but didn't really care as long as they were all right." She followed up with "Daddy is hurt." I went to the bathroom to find my husband hiding his hands behind his back. "There was an accident." Not wanting a long drawn out explanation I said, "Your daughter already filled me in. Let's see the damage." There was a wave of momentary horror as I viewed his hands. "Please tell me that isn't your bone." He eyed one of his fingers, "Um no. That isn't bone." At that point, I could proceed. There was a lot of blood, and I tried to get some of the blacktop stains off, but that wasn't happening. I cleansed, medicated, and bandaged his hands. Throughout the course of the afternoon, little bits and pieces of the story started to emerge. Things like "Well, the guy we were racing didn't know what to do." Excuse me? "Guy we were racing?" Apparently, my husband was racing some random man in the parking lot. "How old was he?" My husband shrugged, "Probably in his mid-forties." I had to know if he at least had a child with him too, he did not. Then later, I was driving us on another errand, and my husband said, "You know the really embarrassing part?" I couldn't imagine anything MORE embarrassing than the picture that was already in my brain, but I asked, "What?" Apparently before the cart tipped he yelled out, "We're winning! We're winning!" I started to giggle, and then I laughed until I cried. It was all so ridiculous. I said to him, "You realize those grocery store employees are probably watching that security tape over and over laughing their butts off, right?"

Since the incident the wounds are SLOWLY mending. Most of the fingers look passable with the exception of two. I still insist on cleaning and bandaging those, it isn't fair to the general public to have to look at those. I think my husband has scrapped all future plans of grocery cart racing. The fear that our child could have been hurt as badly as he was, or worse, has scared that silliness right out of him.