A Boy and his Ball

place holder post

I will never in a million years be able to erase the memory of my boy standing on the side of the road - traumatized - and crying for his new ball

Update:

This was the scene after I ran over a large branch in the road just outside of our cousins's house in Bossier City in north Louisiana. The branch had a rather large root system attached that was hard to see at dark-thirty (it was only 7:40ish at night, but it was after a long day outside and there were no street lights at the intersection where I was trying to merge onto the Interstate)
Nevertheless, I dramtically poked a large hole in the oil pan and with a smoky flourish we swept all the kids out of the car (just in case there was more damage that wasn't obvious that might have ignited something under the hood or in the car - too many action films I guess)
We were stranded on the side of the road for about the longest 20 minutes ever. We were literally 5 minutes outside the subdivision where my family lives, and out of the courtesy of strangers, a couple who saw the accident turned around and came back to make sure we were all ok. I think they were shocked to see 4 kids on the side of the road and out of the vehicle already...They were the ones who called 911 and reported the incident since I had no idea where we were.
We had earlier in the trip stopped to get birthday presents and bought a couple of plastic balls that had comic heros emblazoned on the side, which was to replace similar balls that got wrecked by overzealous teething babies and a spiky lemon tree in our rain-starved back yard. So the obvious thing for my son to be upset about, in his universe was the loss (even temporarily) of these new playthings. Funnily enough though, he also lamented his Kumon work (not his schoolwork which was in the same backpack, but the Kumon zipper case which also just happend to house his incentive rewards for doing his Kumon work) Crazy kid!
So now you know, and now I know what is truly important in my oldest son's universe.