Stitches, Concussions, and Other Great Moments in Parenting

Over the course of my lifetime, I've been afraid of many things.  When I was a kid, my list of mortal fears included clowns, fire, and coconut cakes.  In high school I added a few more, things like talking to hot cheerleaders, the cretins hanging out in the smoking area and, of course, clowns.  Then in college, I tacked on alcohol poisoning, STD's, and my evil Music History professor.  Oh, and clowns.  The point is, all of us have our innermost fears, and the list just keeps getting longer and longer.

But I'll tell you this.  Until you become a parent, you have no idea what pure, gut-wrenching terror really is.

From the moment the doctor yanks your goopy blue child screaming from your wife's hoo-hoo (or, if you're a woman, your very own personal hoo-hoo), all you can think about is, "How do I keep this wondrous creature safe until he graduates from high school?"

Personally, I was able to protect my son Ryan from harm up until the age of nine days, at which time I attempted to clip his fingernails.  I carefully laid him down on the changing table, making sure his diaper was secured so he didn't pee in my ear again.  I located the Black and Decker Infant Nail Clippers, tenderly placed his delicate little hand in mine and with the utmost caution proceeded to hack off his index finger.  Blood spurted everywhere, like that scene in Jaws when Quint gets bitten in half.  Ryan, meanwhile, was shrieking like a banshee, turning various shades of purple.


In retrospect, it probably wasn't quite that horrific, but that's how it will forever live in my memory.

Ryan is now almost eighteen and my daughter Lindsay is almost fifteen, and for the most part they've managed to avoid serious injury.  This is a definite departure from the family traditions set forth by me and my brothers who, during our childhood years, suffered from broken bones, gaping head wounds, foot-long splinters embedded in thigh muscle, scratched corneas, severed fingertips, chipped teeth, an assortment of gashes and cuts, and one case of mangled face suffered by my brother Bobby when he attempted to ride his bike down the apparently-not-obviously-enough-named "Suicide Hill."  This list, by the way, is not intended to be all-inclusive.

Now, while I did say that my kids have done a decent job of staying in one piece, this doesn't mean we've avoided the emergency room completely.  Our first trip took place a few years ago.  I was sitting in the bleachers on a sunny afternoon watching Ryan and the rest of the Norco Junior League Athletics shag fly balls in the outfield, preparing for their upcoming battle against the vaunted Giants.  I was chatting with my daughter when a collective "gasp" passed through the crowd.  I looked out onto the field and noticed a team of coaches surrounding a fallen player.  As any parent would, I surveyed the Athletics who were still upright, looking for Ryan.  When I didn't see him among the conscious, I used my Sherlock Holmesian powers of deductive reasoning to conclude that he was, in fact, the kid bleeding all over the freshly-mowed outfield grass.

As I got up to go check on him, I overheard a mom say, "Ah, who cares, it's not MY kid."  Before I could even turn around to tell this insensitive bitch to go screw herself, I heard my daughter Lindsay say, "Hey, lady, it's my brother so why don't you just shut up, okay?"

I've never been so proud.

I jogged to the outfield to check on Ry.  I was not prepared for what I was about to see, specifically, my son's face completely covered in his own blood.  It was the fingernail clipping incident all over again.  My initial fear was that the ball had knocked out a few teeth or popped his eyeball out of his head or something.  The gallon of spilled blood made it impossible to locate the actual wound, so I asked Ryan, "Hey buddy, where does it hurt?"  I'll never forget his reply:

"Where it's bleeding from, duh."

I looked at the coach and said, "Yeah, he's gonna be fine."

The Team Mom had arrived with the first aid kid by this point, and managed to stop the bleeding which as it turned out was coming from a nasty gash above Ryan's left eye.  I drove him to the hospital where they stitched him up.  When I went in to see him in recovery he was already hitting on the girl on the next table, who had suffered severe facial trauma trying to pierce her own lip.  A match made in Urgent Care.

More recently, just a couple weeks ago in fact, I paid another visit to our local emergency room, this time with my daughter Lindsay.  In a moment of questionable judgment, Linds signed up for a co-ed basketball league for kids aged 15-17.  On her high school team, she's actually one of the taller, sturdier girls standing about 5'8".  She's used to being one of the bigger players and uses her size to her advantage in the girls' league.  However, playing in a league that's eighty percent post-pubescent guys, she seems better equipped for a stint in the Lullaby League.

So last week, she was back on defense when an opponent roughly the size of Mount McKinley came driving down the lane.  For non-basketball fans, that means he was rumbling toward the basket fully prepared to trample anything and everything that got in his way.

Which turned out to be my poor innocent little girl.

The good news is that she stood in there and took the charge, just as she's been taught.  The bad news is that since Man-Mountain McGee had at least a hundred pound weight advantage, the resulting collision sent her flying through the air.  Gravity, as it tends to do, took it from there and when Linds re-entered the earth's atmosphere, it was the back of her skull that first contacted the wooden floor.  A nauseating "thunk" echoed throughout the gym.

As I raced the ambulance to the hospital, my body was possessed by St. Wimperly, the Patron Saint of Overprotective Parents.  "That's it, she's done with basketball," I thought.  "Tomorrow I'm signing her up for oboe lessons.  The only dangerous thing about an oboe is listening to somebody try to play one."

In a feat of driving skill that would put Jeff Gordon to shame, I beat the ambulance to the ER by about five minutes.  I followed Lindsay's gurney (my baby girl is on a GURNEY!) to the patient inspection room or whatever they call it, where they took her vital signs.

"Hi, Linds, how are you feeling?" I asked.

She looked at me and smiled.  "That ambulance driver was HOT!"

If she wasn't already in the hospital, I think I'd have knocked her out.



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Here's to You, Mr. Bogataj

Vinko Bogataj.

Chances are you don't recognize the name. But while the name itself might not ring a bell, I'm pretty certain that you know who Vinko is, and you're probably familiar with his singularly spectacular claim to fame.

Vinko Bogataj was born in Slovenia in 1950. He had a relatively normal European childhood, and I'm sure his parents doted upon little Vinkie and cherished his every word, as parents do. Sometime during his teenage years, the adolescent Vinko made a fateful decision, setting in motion a chain of events that would forever secure his place in history.

Vinko took up ski jumping.

On March 21, 1970, Vinko Bogataj was entered in the Ski Flying World Championships in Oberstdorf, Germany. A light snow had begun to fall, and when the time came for Vinko's third jump, the ramp had become quite treacherous. As he hurtled downward, he realized that the weather conditions had significantly enslickened the ramp, causing him to go much faster than he had anticipated. He lowered his center of gravity in an effort to abort his descent. Instead of stopping, however, Vinko lost his balance and fell to the ground, where he ceased being a ski jumper and instead transformed into a 155-pound helmeted projectile hurtling off the ramp, crashing to the ground, bouncing into a crowd of stunned observers, and miraculously suffering no more than a mild concussion and a compound fracture of his self-esteem.

All of which would have long since been forgotten had an ABC Sports film crew not been taping the event.

You've guessed it. Vinko Bogataj is "The Agony of Defeat Guy."

Imagine what this would be like. You make a single mistake, and you are remembered for that one thing and nothing else for the rest of your life. And it's not like this was some horrific event, either. It's one thing when you're Joseph Hazelwood and your one mistake was getting shit-faced and wrecking an oil tanker causing a spill of epic proportions, killing marine life in the area and disrupting the balance of nature. One wouldn't expect a gaffe like that to slip by unnoticed. Or Custer, whose one mistake led to his troops being massacred at Little Big Horn. That was an historic event.

But that's not the case with poor Vinko. Vinko didn't turn the ocean into an oil slick. Vinko didn't cause soldiers to die. Vinko didn't slaughter college girls, plan an attack on the World Trade Center, or fire a rifle from the Texas School Book Depository.

Vinko fell down.

For the next thirty years, the opening sequence of ABC's Wide World of Sports featured Jim McKay's narrative accompanying a series of video clips. "Spanning the globe, bringing you the constant variety of sport. The thrill of victory. The agony . . . of defeat."

Every season, "the thrill of victory" was different. Muhammad Ali raising his arms after a knockout. A.J. Foyt taking the checkered flag at Indy. A bunch of kids from Connecticut winning the Little League World Series. But "the agony of defeat" remained unchanged. Vinko Bogataj flew off the ramp in Oberstdorf 52 times a year for thirty painful years. Good grief.

Ironically, and I suppose fortunately, Vinko Bogataj was oblivious to his informal induction into the Screw Up Hall of Fame. Having retired to a quiet life in Slovenia, he was blissfully unaware of ABC's Wide World of Sports and was therefore quite surprised when, decades later, he was invited to be on the 30th Anniversary special.

For the love of God, I hope they briefed him ahead of time.

But what if they didn't? I can only imagine, a tuxedo-clad Vinko sitting in a palatial ballroom at the MGM Grand, gazing up at the dais where he sees ABC executives and assorted celebrities. Perhaps he's seated at an elegant table, complete with ABC centerpieces and embossed place cards, eating rubber chicken and sipping iced tea with Dorothy Hamill, Evel Knievel and Bruce Jenner. All of a sudden, the lights dim, a hush falls over the ballroom, and Jim McKay's voice booms over the speakers.

"SPANNING THE GLOBE, BRINGING YOU THE CONSTANT VARIETY OF SPORT. . . "

Theme music kicks in.

Oh boy, thinks Vinko. Ziss is incredible! Whole show devoted entirely to zee sports world. I had no idea such thing even existed. And I'm sitting right next to zee Evel Knievel! I vunder if I can get his autograph later, yes? Whatta country!

"THE THRILL OF VICTORY . . . "

Vinko sits, eyes wide, his attention on the big screen. Zee thrill of victory, yes! There's Mary Lou Retton getting gold medal . . . Ali scoring big knockout . . . how cool vood be to appear on zee video celebrating victory, no? Zee big honor!

"THE AGONY . . . OF DEFEAT."

Hey, what the . . . "AUUGGGH!!!"

In honor of Vinko Bogataj, I think you should all take a moment and share a personal screwup with a friend, and have a good chuckle at your own expense. After all, everybody makes mistakes and we shouldn't have to live with one small goof our whole life. Unburden yourself. Whether it's a huge, public disaster like the Exxon Valdez, or a small, private faux pas. Maybe you got pantsed in front of the girl you had the hots for. Perhaps you took a header, and face-planted yourself in the punch bowl at your sister's Bat Mitzvah. Whatever your blunder, understand that you're not alone.

Just remember Vinko. Remember him fondly.