Five Reasons Not To Play Football with a Furnace

Sunday afternoon. Enoch was across the street raking the neighbor's leaves. I was humoring Rosalind by letting her sit on the potty. Brendan was getting ready to wake up from a nice long nap, and Julien and Tristan were watching football in the basement. Well, Tristan's way of "watching" football involves watching for the snap and then running around the room carrying a Nerf ball, tossing it up and diving to the ground. He's been doing it since before he was two. He hopes to someday play professional football or work on utility poles. (I don't know which one is more dangerous!)

The future football player or utility-pole worker. (He also lost his front tooth--an event that went undocumented on the blogosphere.)

So it was no surprise when I heard the sound of someone hitting the furnace from all the way down in the basement. (I just thought the ball had hit an air duct.) And the immediate screaming from Tristan didn't excite me too much, either, since he tends to be over-dramatic at times. I heard the screaming, and I heard footsteps coming up the basement stairs. At least he can still walk, I thought. It can't be very bad. I heard him slip on a piece of cardboard and hit the wooden floor in the living room. Oh, poor guy, I thought. That's like adding insult to injury--I hope he's okay. He kept coming up the stairs, and when I looked over the rail at him, I could see the blood all over his face, and I realized it was a real, bona fide injury. Thank the Lord I was so calm. If I had seen it happen, I may have reacted differently.

Five stitches for the five-year-old football player.

When I sent Julien to go tell Enoch that Tristan will need to go to the hospital, Tristan's screaming went back up a notch. But thankfully he calmed down by the time they left in the car. And when they returned home a few hours later and five stitches later, the same bouncy, energetic, happy-go-lucky boy acted as if it all was no big deal. I guess my football player needs a helmet.

Ready for a re-match.