Bushes, Balls, and Bad Injuries

Jun 16

4 min read

A Conversation from the Sidelines of a Lacrosse Tournament

We were sitting at a lacrosse tournament last weekend, baking in the hot Florida sun, when my husband looked up and realized his friend was no longer with us under the tent.

"Where's Caleb?"

"Who knows?" his wife, Michelle, responded.

I did a quick scan of the area and pointed to the back of the field. "There he is."

Sure enough, there was Caleb, walking into the bushes along the perimeter of the park.

"Does he not know there's a public bathroom right over there?" I asked.

"No. He's going out there to retrieve balls," Michelle explained.

"Why didn't he ask me to come?" Michael wondered aloud.

"Isn't there a name for that?" I asked.

"For what?" Michael responded.

"For picking up stray balls," I said.

"Yeah," he replied. "Picking up stray balls."

"No, there's a term for it. And it always sounded somewhat suggestively inappropriate."

They both stared at me blankly as I sat there wondering if I had been the victim of yet another blonde moment where people convinced me that an inappropriate phrase was what we called picking up stray balls.

I looked back toward Caleb and saw another man emerging from the brush. "There are other dads out there too? At least I hope that's another dad. Now this is just starting to look weird."

"Is it bad that it's normal to me?" Michelle asked.

When Caleb returned to our tent, I queued up the nostalgic '90s Budweiser jingle, Real American Heroes, and informed him, "We salute you, Mr. Stray Lacrosse Ball Getter."

He laughed as Michael said, "Hey man, I would've gone with you."

Caleb assured him, "You're always welcome to join me. But I'm not sure you'd want to be out there. There were so many webs in those bushes that I'm covered in more silk than China right now."

I said, "I would've been more worried about fire ants. I can't believe you went back there in flip-flops."

"That's nothing!" Caleb said. "I grew up on a farm, riding all kinds of equipment in flip-flops."

Michelle rolled her eyes.

I mentioned how Charley had just re-landscaped our front yard barefoot.

Caleb said, "There ain't nothing wrong with that. He's not gonna get splinters from mulch."

"I was more concerned about the thorns in some of those bushes," I said. "One time, I went to take the trash out in flip-flops and stepped on a recently pruned branch from my neighbor's bougainvillea. A thorn went through my flip-flop and pierced the bottom of my foot. It hurt for about a week. I can't imagine how that would've felt if I'd been barefoot."

"Oh man," Caleb said, "that reminds me of the time one of my buddies was running through a field barefoot and went to hop over the neighbor's fence and—"

"Lord, no," I said, bracing for the worst.

"They had just trimmed back the hedge along the fence, and the tops had been cut off at an angle. When he landed on the other side, one of the branches went clear through the bottom of his foot and came out the top."

My stomach flipped.

"Why do we all have a story like this?" I asked. "One time, my brother jumped out of a treehouse and landed on a loose board with a rusty nail sticking out of it. The nail went through his shoe and into his foot."

Caleb recalled another childhood injury. "When I was younger, we used a rusty cable as a rope swing over the river. When I went to let go, I slid down it, and hundreds of metal shards got lodged in my hand."

We all winced in unison.

"I had to go down to the neighbor doctor, and he picked them out one by one."

Michelle clarified, "When he says he went to the neighbor doctor, he doesn't mean he went to a nearby doctor's office. He literally went to the neighbor's house because the neighbor was a doctor."

"Did he at least give you a tetanus shot?" I asked.

"Probably not," he responded.

"Think it's too late?"

Michelle started laughing. "By the way, are we still supposed to be getting tetanus shots?"

"I don't know," I said. "I was recently at the pharmacy, and they told me I was due for one and offered to give it to me, but I turned it down."

She said, "The last time I got one was when my daughter was born. For some reason, they said I needed it. But that was it. I'm not even sure how often you're supposed to get them."

I agreed. "No idea. At this point, it seems like after you get hurt, they ask if you've had a tetanus shot. Wouldn't it just be easier to know you haven't had one and get it if and when you need it?"

"That seems about right," Michelle said.

Caleb got up and started walking back toward the bushes.