Bad but Good.

I know I wrote in a few entries back about staying positive and focusing on the good, but sometimes the bad stuff is just more interesting to talk about, and certainly more interesting for you the reader. So as a tribute to you the small handful of folks who actually read this blog, I give you some humor around a not necessarily positive experience.

In celebration of Mothers’ Day, we went to the Phillies game. We had great seats, 8 rows off of third base. My 7 year old son was so excited to be seeing his first major league game. My daughter was not really that interested in going at first, but as soon as I told her about the Phillie Phanatic, she was in, and started referring to him as Mr. Pickle. Come to think of it, I probably could have just told her there would be cotton candy and she’d be good to go. My husband is a Braves fan, so he was looking forward to seeing his team play in person of course. We decided to go up early to watch batting practice and maybe get an autograph and just take in all that a ballpark has to offer.

Game time was 1:35. At around 12:45 the camera man comes out and is talking to some folks up front. I think to myself, if my outgoing 4 year old daughter can use her wily charms on the camera man, maybe she’ll get some footage on the big screen or even on TV. So I convince her to go down and talk to him.

She heads down on one side of the aisle that’s pretty crowded, so my husband calls out to her to come back up and go around the other side. Just then she does a 180 and splat – flat on her chin on the concrete steps. What few people were in the stands this early gasped and sort of froze. My husband and I remained seated, exchanged rolling eye glances then he slowly rose to scoop her up and get her some ice at the first aid station.. You see, my darling daughter is a major clutz and is constantly falling down, and she tends to be a little over-dramatic at times, so we naturally used our low-key response as a way to ensure she didn’t freak out over a little bump on her chin.

Little did I know that the little bump on her chin would require 3 stitches. Did you know that the emergency personnel at Citizen’s Bank Park are not equipped to put in sutures? What an outrage! The game hadn’t even started yet and we had to go get stitches? Unacceptable. Turns out with a clean laceration, you can wait up to 12+ hours to get stitched. So or course we stayed until the 6th inning when her bloodiness starting seeping through her bandaid, and I felt pretty confident no one at the Park was going to give us any special treatment as a result of this unfortunate accident. When the usher had asked us for our exact section and seat numbers, I thought for sure he was going to send the Phanatic over or maybe get us some freebies. Well, besides a little Phanatic figurine (Mr. Pickle) and 2 “First Game” certificates, we got nothing. My brother is convinced that if I call management and complain we’ll get free season tickets for life.

We headed to the ER and were brought to a room right away. True to form, she kept the ER nurses amused with her post-sedation antics. Slurred speech, seeing blue everywhere, trying to show them her “Robot Dance”, and just trying to move around on the bed, falling over and cracking her head on the bedrails. She was a laugh and a half.

I must say it was a really great experience. No tears at the hospital, lots of laughs, she’s got purple “chin hairs” to play with and I got my sushi for dinner after all. Happy Mother’s Day.