A Guest Entry, by Uncle Hal

I turned 30 on Monday, September 12.  In order to celebrate my 30^th birthday, I had to squeeze in time with friends and family around a week long business trip to London.  So, the weekend before my trip, we took a trip to Nashville with some friends to bar hop, listen to live music, and watch Georgia Tech beat Middle Tennessee State in Murfreesboro.  After a week of 12 hour work days and long nights in the UK, Jen and I go straight from the airport to a going away dinner for Todd and Suzy before they move to Australia.  Then, we’re up early on Saturday to tailgate before the Tech-Kansas game where Todd and I share a joint cookie cake (“Farewell Todd, Happy Birthday Hal”).  After the game, we go straight to Nick’s surprise birthday party in Alpharetta to hang out with that crowd and catch up with some folks that we haven’t seen in months.  Jen and I decide to call it an early night so that we can get up and invite ourselves to Fayetteville on Sunday to see the family before Holly, Jeff, and the kids headed to Disney World.  If we left Fayetteville by 4:30, we could make it back up to Atlanta in time for the final send off for Todd and Suzy.  Why not squeeze in the visit?

I’ll tell you why not.  Because whenever I force things, it blows up in my face. 

Tech is playing in Murfreesboro on the weekend before my birthday – perfect set up for my last weekend in my 20’s.  A short drive, free hotel, and the ticket to London from Nashville is $1,200 cheaper than the ticket from Atlanta.  No brainer.  No problems.

My flight from London gets in at 5:45 pm – perfect, dinner is at 7:30.  No issues.

The Kansas game kicks off at noon – great, we can make it to Nick’s party with no problem.  Everybody has a great time.

So, we invite ourselves and head down to the house and inherently invite trouble.

We get to the house hungry and talk about heading down the road to the annual Inman Farm Heritage Days – a tractor show and farm festival with corndogs, BBQ, cotton candy, and all kinds of farm equipment to check out.  The boys had been down a handful of times earlier in the weekend, so Jen and I make plans to walk down to grab a BBQ sandwich and check out the tractor show.  Asa and Addison are going to come show us the ropes.

The four of us start down the gravel driveway, Asa plowing through the rocks on a razor scooter and the rest of us on foot.  We get to the end of the typically quiet road and have to wait because trucks are going down the road with empty trailers and up the road carrying tractors.  The driveway meets the road with a tree and a shallow ditch on the left and a deep ditch on the left marked with a metal fence post capped with a construction cone that acts as a visual marker so that you don’t put your front driver’s side tire in the ditch.  We come to a stop at the end of the drive on the gravel between the tree and the suspended orange cone.  Jen and I are making an extra effort to keep Asa and his scooter from getting onto the road before we’re ready to start the walk.  In the mean time, Addison has mounted the suspended construction cone with his feet on the flat rubber bottom and his hands around the top.  Before I can say ‘let’s go’ the bottom drops out.  The stress from his weight forces the metal fence post up through the top of the cone and Addison and the cone free fall.  The top of the metal post catches Addison under the chin... Hard.

We get him up and assess the situation.  He’s saying, “I’m fine, let’s just keep going”, but its not convincing because he won’t pull his hand away from his neck and its pretty clearly bleeding.  So, we start heading back to the house.  Jen is with Addison and I’m with Asa… Jen points out that I should run ahead and let Holly & Mom know that a kid is bleeding… from his neck. 

The moms diagnose the wound pretty quickly and calmly and Jeff takes Addison to the hospital for stitches.  Bummer.  Still shaken, Jen and I take Asa down to Farm Days and apologize that we’re going to give him no freedom to walk around and get himself run over by a tractor or caught in a hay baler or fall in an old well or something unforeseen.  He’s cool with it and after about a half mile of walking back and forth and trying to get directions from the cotton candy guy and the deep fried Oreos guy, we find the BBQ stand (under the GIANT sign right near where we parked). 

Over lunch we talked about Addison’s injury and it was clear that Jen and I were shaken up and worried about him.  I haven’t experienced this much stress in a long time.  I’ve made or found big time mistakes at work that occupied my mind less.  So, being sensitive to all this, Asa comes up with the idea to do something for Addison before he gets back from the emergency room.  This is probably to make Jen and I feel better (or to shut us up) than it was for Addison.

We get back to the house before Addison and Asa disappears to work his magic.  When Addison gets back we’re in the living room talking to him about his visit to the doctor and the seven stitches he got when *BANG* we turn around to see Ivey face down on the hardwood floors, three feet lower from where she was sitting on the bar stool a second before.  She cried, but handles it well, but its about all I can take of this stuff.  Luckily 4:30 is approaching so we stand around the island in the kitchen, I get my Happy Birthday serenade, and we all eat cupcakes.  Jen and I can’t get out of their fast enough when 4:30 comes around so we can get back to our laid back routine.