Saturday, November 24, 2007

The Holiday Spoiler


You may wonder who the “holiday spoiler” is. Most people would call him Ebenezer Scrooge, but I call him dad. It’s not that my dad is mean around the holidays, but he really knows how to reck a perfectly good holiday, especially for himself.

For the past two years he has made my Thanksgivings very stressful, and when you are stressed on Thanksgiving it is extremely hard to be grateful for all that we’ve been given.

It wasn’t completely my dad’s fault that I had a bad Thanksgiving; it’s all because of a violent sport called “football.”! If you read my past blogs you would know that my dad is a soldier in the National Guard, that makes him really competitive at brutal sports like football. He loves playing dangerous sports! The only problem is that he is not in the best shape in his life, that causes a few complications when he plays sports.

It is a tradition in my family that all of our family including my two grandparents, my cousins, and my aunts and uncles come to our house on Thanksgiving Day. It is also a tradition that while the women cook all the crescent rolls and mouth watering turkeys, that the boys play a game of football in the field next to my house. I am not your typical girl, I don’t like shopping, and I enjoy playing football over cooking meals. You may have noticed that my blog name is “Sporty Girl.” So I am the exception to the “boys play football” tradition, I always play too. Last Thanksgiving I watched in horror as my dad ran down the choppy grass to score a touch down. Why was I watching in horror? Because my dad tore two hamstrings in both of his legs as he was running! He couldn’t ski the whole winter, and he limped for months.

“He learned his lesson that time didn’t he?” No, no, no, no, no! This year was so much worse. My dad almost had a heart attack! He only ran one play, and he couldn’t breathe. He started having chest convulsions and came home quickly. He whipped open the door and shouted my mom’s name. He stumbled onto the couch as my sister ran to his aid. He was cold and sweaty. His red face was contorted with pain.
“Take me to the hospital now!” he gasped when my mom entered the room.
“Okay, okay!” she cried. She ran to her room and grabbed a jacket and started looking for her shoes. I was livid with anger.
“Mom!” I yelled furiously.
“What are you doing?!? You don’t need shoes, take him now! He could die!”
“Chill out!” she snapped. I pestered her to hurry all the way out to the car. Mom made me and Josie stay home. Josie started bawling her head off. You think that my twenty year old sister would be the one to comfort me but she didn’t. Luckily I have read lots of books, I knew that I was supposed to keep my head straight and start comforting my sister. I hugged her and repeated a phrase over and over again.
“It’s going to be fine Josie, you’re okay!” that didn’t help at all. So I tried a new tactic.
“Here lets do something else, to keep your mind off of things.” I pointed to some adds on the counter.
“How about some Christmas shopping?” Shakily she started searching for gifts to give all of her nieces and nephews. But to no avail, she couldn’t see one gift through her sea of tears. I won’t be mentioning religion in any other of my blogs but it feels appropriate to mention now. Josie said
“Let’s pray Jojo.” I couldn’t agree more. Immediately I volunteered to say it, I knew that she couldn’t do it in her current state. I prayed that my dad would be okay and that he could get to the hospital safetly. That was hardly necessary. Within the minute the garage door opened and both my parents entered.
“What?” I gasped in surprise. My parents were arguing.
“Greg, if you think you are going to have a heart attack, you don’t just ignore it!” said my mom.
“I feel better now, the pain has gone away! Don’t worry about me!” Well, I wasn’t relieved to see my parents argue, but I sure was relieved to see them home. My dad asked politely if I would get him a drink of water. When I gave him the glass I sat down next to him. I laughed uneasily,
“Dad, no more football for you, okay?” We all started laughing, then he promised that he wouldn’t play so hard.

2 comments:

Panda Girl said...

Whoa! That would scare me way bad too! I'm glad your dad is okay!

Brain said...

Freaky! If I were you I'd lock my dad in his room next Thanksgiving.