Accident Prone: The Rest of the Story

Have you ever known someone who was accident prone? It seems no matter what they do, they are always in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well, that was my little brother Nathan. It seemed no matter how careful my parents were (as far as allowing him to go certain places or participate in certain activities) Nathan had a huge target on his back that said to tragedy, “pick me.” My mom reminded me that after we enjoyed the lovely dinner referenced in yesterday's blog, tragedy came a knocking and guess who answered the door.

Growing up, our house had what was called an Arizona room. It was previously a covered back patio, but we enclosed it with three Arcadia doors, painted the concrete floor and added its own window air conditioning unit. The room was our family game room. I had a bumper pool table, one of those large family style booths you find at IHOP, an arcade game my uncle had given us and on this particular day, our AFX track was set up in the corner on the floor. Nate and I had been racing our cars when his water goblet from dinner, which actually held ice tea, was knocked over and the stem of the glass broke. The stem of the goblet broke at an exact angle that created a weapon of sorts that looked like an icicle. Not wanting this inconvenient mishap to interrupt our race we grabbed one of the cloth dinner napkins, mopped up the tea, and then carefully wrapped the broken glass in the napkin shoving it aside to clean up later. Shortly thereafter my bladder was feeling the affects of all the ice tea I'd drank and I ran off to the bathroom.

I hadn't even flushed the toilet when I heard howling coming from the game room. Not a happy howling but an intense painful howling. Nathan had somehow managed to back up over that chard of glass wrapped in the towel with his left leg and sliced his tendon right in half. Our family fun filled night came to a screeching halt—words flew about whose fault it was and how stupid it was to leave the broken goblet on the floor. But we were just kids and all that didn't matter much anymore with Nathan writhing in pain. What really needed to happen was for my parents to get Nathan to the emergency room.

This wasn't the first time Nate had found trouble in the form of an accident. I the first time, he was almost four and was skipping backwards across the street. He never saw the car. It would certainly not be the last time—I'm not even sure I can count the amount of times that boy was in the E.R. Ultimately, I believe all the times he was on narcotic pain medication instigated his drug addiction which led to his death so early in life. It will be thirteen years this June since Nathan left this world and was completely healed of this drug addiction—and his propensity to being accident prone. What I wouldn't give to have him here; knowing that the phone could ring at any moment with my mom's voice on the other end stating Nate has had an accident and they're en route to the hospital. But, Nathan wouldn't want that—and once we're all given a little taste of heaven, where he is now, we'll all understand why our loved ones who have gone before us wouldn't trade places for anything.