Crisis Management
I just spent an interesting weekend down in the Great White North. Monday, October 13, is Canadian Thanksgiving, and since my brother is living in Canada, but working in The United States, he decided to host a Thanksgiving dinner in Sunday at his place in Lasalle (suburban Windsor), Ontario. A beautiful pair of days was our reward for making it across the border early Saturday afternoon. And a double dose of unusual happenings for my baby and I as well...
It was a lovely lazy Saturday afternoon when I decided to take a break from playing PC Doctor for
another little brother who lives in Kingsville. My girlfriend and I were sitting outside, waiting for my two year old niece to come up the stairs and open the gate to sit down with us. I hear her start to fumble with the gate, and then I hear her start screaming. I look over the gate to see a hornet crawling into her shirt. I grabbed her and lifted her on to the deck, and tried to keep the hornet away from her while she was screaming in my ears. My girlfriend and I managed to finally extricate the shirt and the hornet from my niece’s general vicinity, and my girlfriend found the spot under her chin where my niece had been stung.
On Sunday, we headed over to our brother’s place (there’s six of us – four males and two females - and I’m the oldest) for a wondrous feast including turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberries, carrots, corn, and salad. My Dad, one of his sisters, and one of his brothers were also there – and my brother had the wisdom and foresight to pick up some beer from the
Big Buck Brewery over in Auburn Hills, Michigan. So by sevenish on Sunday night, we were all feeling nicely sated, and were settling down to the business of
arguing discussing current events, and enjoying the wonderful evening that we were lucky enough to be able to appreciate.
Well,
this brother’s youngest daughter, as near as I can tell, was playing with her insect collection. She keeps them in a glass jar, and I guess it was the time of evening when she has seen some cool bugs before. Or, she was trying to bring her collection out to where all of us grownups were sitting and show the adults – she was trying to find a way to say “Look at me!” when she has three sisters and two cousins to compete with for the adults’ attention. I’m not a child psychiatrist, so of course I’m guessing. Whatever the reason, she decided to bring out a glass jug, and start mucking around with it.
Her Dad (my brother), my girlfriend, and I were out on his patio, having some beers and talking about life, the universe, and everything. Andy (my brother) says to Andrea (his daughter) to be careful, so she doesn’t break the glass jar she’s playing with. Well, the next thing we know, we hear a crash in the immediate vicinity. Andy sees his daughter standing in the middle of a bunch of broken glass, and so he grabs here, lifts her up onto the stairs going inside, and tells her to get inside and get the cleanup utensils for Dad. And that’s when the screaming starts.
Andy brings Andrea into the house, and starts talking to his wife. They yell out, with quite a bit of anxiety in their voices, for us to look around the patio for the tip of my niece’s toe. Unbeknownst to us, when the jar dropped, it sliced through her second toe right at the knuckle just below the toenail. I’m telling you, it was
very weird to look down and see a tiny little piece of toe, complete with toenail, just sitting there on one of the patio stones.
At this point, my girlfriend, who works as a nurse in an ER, involved herself in the action. She told everyone what they needed to do (put the piece on ice, where to put pressure to stop the bleeding), and more importantly, she kept her head in a crisis situation, calmed down the players, and got them to pursue a course of action that would solve the problem. Within minutes, they were off to the hospital for some of that wonderful subsidized health care that Canada is known for.
We stayed around for a bit, but I had to work the next day, and so we took off before my brother and sister-in-law got back with my little niece. They informed us later that night that the people at the hospital were able to sew the toe back on relatively easily. Now all we have to do is wait and see if the surgery will take.
So, I’d like to take this opportunity to put mad props to my baby into the public record. She handled this crisis situation with poise, and managed to be the voice of reason that calmed everyone else down. She was also able to analyze the events, remember the proper procedures, and enact them in unfamiliar (to her) territory. Did I mention that this was the first time that my sister-in-law and her children met my girlfriend? And the first time my girlfriend got to see my brother’s house? It was also her first meeting with my aunt and uncle (Dad’s kin), who I’m pretty sure are all of what’s left of that generation in my Dad’s family.
So, now I’m sitting here wondering if there is some sort of cosmic ‘Kick Me’ sign on my back. I’ve been involved, over the last year, in
the Rush Limbaugh transcripts project (which has been plagued with problems almost form the word go) and
Open Source Politics (which recently lost the services of its’ driving force). I am currently employed by
Kmart (I was hired a year before the bankruptcy – basically just before they made the inspired decision to lure Chuck Conaway into the CEO’s position). My girlfriend has had her house broken into since we became an item. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of unusual happenings experienced in my personal blast zone. Over the last year.
On the other hand, maybe it’s just the law of averages catching up with me.
And on the other hand (which I might be saying if I were Zaphod Beeblebrox) it’s time for me to go to work (which I would
never be saying if I were Zaphod Beeblebrox). Computational abilities seem to be restored, but for some strange reason I’m still a little gun-shy about things...
