Keepin' 'Em in Stitches

"What a coincidence!"

My husband-the-mathematician is still marveling at it. Whatever.

Last Saturday, we had three dogs at our house: ours and two visitors. We had Arlo, our elderly, but fiercely territorial beagle; Violet, a sweet, somewhat timid dog that belongs to our older daughter's family; and Ramsey, the pit bull that belongs to our younger daughter and her husband. The pack leader, aka my husband, was on the porch. The dogs were lovingly watching his every move through the glass storm door. The mailman arrived, setting off a flurry of fearsome barking, scuffling, snapping, and snarling. Husband to the rescue. He came in and dived at the dogs. He didn't know who was attacking whom as he tried to separate the battling beasts. Somehow he slipped on the tile floor and banged his head on a sharp corner. Blood everywhere! He was sure that one dog had bitten another until I noticed blood gushing from a wound on top of his head. So it was off to the walk-in clinic, with me driving, him pressing one of his gym towels to his bleeding head. Wouldn't you know it? We ended up behind a real slow poke during the 4-mile drive. We also had to stop while some guy in an enormous pick-up made several attempts to back his monster into a tiny driveway. Finally, the clinic!

Guess who was there already. Our grandson, Andrew, and his dad! Andrew, the one who had opened up a gash on the back of his head at school 10 days before.

Andrew had come to get his stitches out the very same day, the very same time, that Grandpa came to get his put in. Grandpa thought that was such a cool coincidence! After a nurse exchanged his blood-soaked towel for a wad of sterile gauze, we settled down for a two-hour wait in a room full of flu cases. Andrew's dad brought in milkshakes from the Chick-Fil-A next door.

In due time, they put Grandpa in a cubicle and stitched him up. Seven stitches. Andrew had gotten only three. They put a dressing on the top of his head and held it in place with a stretchy band. He looked a little like an Islamic fundamentalist except for for a wild tuft of hair sticking straight up from the improvised cap. He got more than a few grins as we left the clinic.