What do you do with your kids when it looks like this outside?  We try to take our son to places that offer indoor fun, so he can 1) get some wiggles out, and 2) be around other children.  It was packed at the indoor jumping and trampoline place yesterday though, and something happened that I know that my partner and I have not completely digested.

While winter hangs on a bit, there are flurries and grey

After we had gone to my son’s last basketball game, and I had taken the entire family including his father and my parents out to lunch, we picked up my local best friend’s kids.  One is eleven-months older, and the other is eleven-months younger than my son is.  We were going to go play Skee Ball and video games, but the kids said that they wanted to jump.

The place is an indoor playground, so your kids are protected from the elements of inclement weather.  So we were off to the northern suburbs of our city.  However, yesterday it was packed.  It was neat to see my lithe partner do a front flip on a trampoline runway, and I was shocked that she could given that she is so exceptionally tall.  We divided and conquered watching three kids amidst some chaos, honestly.  I had the three at the end of one of the runways and was walking back with them when I noticed my partner staring at an empty trampoline section.

She asked me, “Did you see it?”  She looked very pale.  I was confused, and the only thing that I actually could process her saying was, “I’m about to cry.  His foot was hanging off.  There is his blood.”  I noticed then that there were drips.  I realized that we had to get the three kids out.

My son is really too heavy to carry these days; although he is only eight.  I opted to carry the one who is eleven-months older than him and corral my son, but I had to keep turning him as we walked out. My leading him pissed him off, but I only did it so he’d avoid the drops of blood trailing to the front of the playground.  The only staff there were around the counter with the injured boy.  We got their shoes on, covered their eyes, and got them out.

After an hour, because my friend was not home initially, we arrived in her house and the kids had playmates.  Only then could my partner dump adrenaline and tell us what happened.  She was watching a rounder boy who was probably about ten on one of the trampolines, because his pants were off.  She was telling another boy who was pointing and laughing to stop, and then she locked eyes with the boy.  His eyes cried for help.  That was when she noticed blood squirting out of his leg and that both his tibia and fibula were exposed.

She held him.  She petted his head.  She called for help.  She waved her arms.  She couldn’t lift him.

In times like that temporal parameters don’t exist, and all seems slowed.  I don’t know how long she held him until a big guy picked him up and took him up front.  She didn’t get to tell me or any other adult this story until we had been to the kids’ house twice and ours once, because time was screwy all around yesterday.

I’m sad today.  I’m sad because my partner had to help a kid who was significantly injured and the employees at the indoor playground were impotent.  I’m sad for this kid.  I’m tripped out, because the day before my 14th birthday I had this same fracture as I laid on asphalt.  I don’t know why my partner of all people, had to see this happen to another kid, and served as his only help.  I hope that his family has insurance, because those types of realities scare me too.

We will leave for church in about half-an-hour.  I’ll pray for this little boy who seemed alone at the playground yesterday while his leg had come apart.  I’ll also pray for peace and light for my partner, who was honestly like an angel for him, who today wonders if she’ll go through the indoor playground, or our Children’s Hospital to follow-up with this little boy.  Life is fragile.  It’s cold today, and I’m reminded of how precarious the human condition really is.