This is a true story ...
I began the morning repeating my broken record routine of talking my daughters into answering the door when their friend arrived to walk to school, so she would not go through her daily routine of peeking in our mail slot and looking into our home while she waited.
On the drive to work I was tailgated twice by the same person in different areas when they turned off and later reappeared on a different road several miles away. Within an hour, my brain was partially drained by my anal-retentive co-worker. My cell phone rang twice. As soon as I would answer, the person was hanging up. After calling the number back and discovering it was the school nurse calling me, I was told my daughter had hit the back of her head during the lovely game of flag football. After the school nurse told me she was “fine,” I said I would like to pick her up and she replied that it was “my choice.” I later learned my daughter had also hit the front of her head and was disoriented and seeing double in the moments following her “bumping” it.
A few nights earlier during dinner, I had lamented the dangers of this game after the same child told me of her friend’s back being fractured when a boy literally ran over her back when she fell during the game. We went to the lovely pediatrician’s office where we did the usual sitting till we’ve counted the fish hanging from the ceiling and taking our inventory of the supplies on the counter seventeen times, when a medical intern entered the room. She shook my hand and promptly addressed my daughter in a pink shirt with, “Hey, Buddy!” After administering several tests that are also used as field sobriety tests, she left the room and loudly told the nurses directly outside, “I just called that little girl ‘Buddy!’” after which the women erupted in laughter.
After my daughter was told she had a concussion, I decided we were going to Chick-fil-A for some lunch. Since we were passing the law firm I worked at part-time the alternate days of the week, I asked my daughter if she would like to stop in and meet the ladies, and she said yes. This was nice but slightly strange when, during our brief visit, a call came in for me and I was asked to take it.
