Another Monday, Another Ambulance

Every Monday night football game, it seems, we have to call an ambulance to the game. Usually it is for one of the opposing team players - we've had several possible spinal injuries - and it is scary to watch them get strapped into the boards and carted off in the ambulance. Once it was for a spectator who somehow tripped and fell into a street sign, smashing up their nose very badly and also possibly injuring his neck.

Tonight it was for one of our players and the initial thought is that he messed up his ACL. He was having a great game up to that point and had scored a touchdown. We won 33-6 and there were a lot of great plays by our team. My son scored a touchdown and had some other great runs. One of his friends was the boy who got hurt. His parents took it very well, but I thought his grandmother was going to have a heart attack. She was shaking uncontrollably and had an anxiety attack.

Two more weeks of football and then we go into the play-offs. After football, basketball starts fairly quickly. Last year, Jason broke his collarbone about this same time and missed the end of the season and the beginning of basketball. Last weekend, my nephew broke his arm badly playing football down in Alabama. Dangerous game, but they love playing so much and enjoy the physical contact. My son is not a very big kid but he is very tough and can lay out the biggest opponents. I wonder at myself sometimes when I am proud that he's "flattened" another player and the other player has a hard time getting up. And, I wonder how they can tell the other player, after they've been flattened, that it was a good hit and he did a good job.