blood, guts, and terror

I was raised in a family of fainters. You would hear the thud and run to find who had keeled over at the sight of their own blood. My dad and my sister would both try to warn doctors that they were likely to hit the floor, and then they would follow through. So I come by it honest.

Then I had R2 and people were always sticking needles in him and cutting his brains open and stuff and I just had to deal. I mean, I'd think, "Hey, I'm getting a little woozy," and then I'd just have to shake it off or maybe put my head between my knees and then get back up and take it like a man. So we went through a couple of years of blood and guts and surgeries and such, and then things leveled out and I started freaking out over scraped knees again.

And the MOG, he's on the road a lot, so I just try really hard to hold it together and put on the Band-Aids and then go lie down for a while, you know, play it cool. Still, somehow I transmitted the Wuss gene to Toby. We have the strain of Wuss Disease that is mostly impacted by blood and stories involving blood. Tell me a blood story while I'm driving, if you're suicidal.

So last weekend Toby and Bean and I went to a few garage sales, and at the very end, Toby and Brynn simultaneously tripped and fell in the driveway. I mean, simultaneously. It was like some kinda Rube Goldberg kinda deal. Brynn tore her tights but just jumped up and kept running. Toby took things harder. He started screaming and all the sweet old garage sale ladies came running. I tried to calm them and him, since we were like 1 minute from home.

My goal: to hide the fact that he was bleeding until we got home. I failed. He looked down as he was climbing in the car and saw 3 individual scrapes, all bleeding. He nearly collapsed on the curb. I had to lift him into the van and hand him a diaper to cover his injuries, because he couldn't see them. At all. Or the screaming, the screaming.

Once we got home, he hopped into the house, diaper in place over his knee, and the MOG fixed him up with 4 Band-Aids and an apple, because he "needed a nutritious snack". He hopped for the rest of the day and has refused to take a bath since, because of the injury. Sigh.

I can't blame him. It was awful.