Quasimodo

This past weekend, (Friday to Monday), we had our annual church Winter Retreat. It started off a little late, with lots of prep to get the church bus ready for the trip, the radiator blew literally when they turned it on to pull out of the parking lot. So Brian and the other leaders (the wives were already at the retreat center getting dinner on!) scrambled to find enough vehicles to transport 26 teens and all their luggage. They were about an hour late, which was not bad, considering! This year the speaker was the former youth pastor, so that was a lot of fun. We had a very challenging weekend, spiritually, and also a lot of fun.

Adding to the “fun”…there’s this game, it’s called Sharks and Minnows, Sharks have flashlights and Minnows don’t, and when you get tagged by a Shark you turn your light on. Or something similar. I wasn’t actually playing as it was after midnight and pretty cold for my newly acquired Southern sensibilities. Another leader and friend Josh was chasing Brian, and Tom (leader and friend) was running in another direction and Tom & Brian collided, forehead to eyebrow. Tom is a little taller than Brian and built bigger (haha, stronger:-), so with a combination of all those factors, Tom came out with a big bump and a little scratch, and Brian came out with STITCHES! At first we couldn’t tell how bad it would be, but while at the hospital and really looking at it after the deep tissue irrigation, I thought it was not looking good. I thought maybe he might need plastic surgery, I couldn’t see it going back… there was a huge hole in his head. But the doctor did a great job! There are about 20 stitches that you can see and there were many under the surface…the doctor lost count! He actually ran out of stitching thread and had to ask for another. This is on my top 2 list of grossest things I’ve ever seen. We thought he might have a concussion, he was having a hard time staying awake and was nauseous, but after he threw up he started to feel better, and he passed all their acuity tests so he didn’t need a CAT scan and apparently did not have a concussion.

We got home from the hospital just as the kids were told lights out, so we barely missed out on any fun. All things considered it turned out as well as it could have. It was a blessing that it was only leaders involved in the incident. A kid would have likely been far more injured, based on size and weight, plus then we’d have some parents to answer to. So even though he's fairly ugly now (haha:-), it worked out pretty good. And to answer the question on everyones mind, Does Brian ever do anything without getting hurt?...that would be an obvious "nope". :-)

I think there are grosser pictures that were taken. With so many teens and cameras, it was like the paparazzi following him documenting everything. So far only one of the girls has her pictures on facebook, so I stole a couple.

This is him in off the field and getting cleaned up.


When we arrived at the hospital looking like this, they asked if he'd had surgery. Uh, no, we are just trying to hold his eye in! At the hospital Brian says, "Well, I know what all the skits will be about tomorrow night!" There were some pretty funny renditions!


Sam (another friend & leader) drove us to the hospital and told the Dr, "He was pretty ugly before, so just try and do what you can". The Dr thought that was funny. It will be a cross/star shaped scar splitting his eyebrow, and going perpendicular to his smile lines, so the Dr said that it would likely always be obvious (esp when smiling), but there is really nothing that can be done about it. I told him we can go shopping for a nice eyebrow pencil. On Brian's bunk when we returned was a note from Josh, Welcome Back Quasimodo. A new nickname was born.