Amidst the chaos of moving I forgot to share the story of “Barney thumb”. My forgetfulness possibly has something to do with the fact that my mind would like to block out the incident all together even though it was “on accident and not on purfis”. Allow me to explain.
Many of our summer days are spent at the baseball park where my husband umpires. They also have a really nice playground there, and candy, and snow cones. It’s my son’s idea of heaven I think (my husband’s too!). We signed my son up for t-ball this year. He is finally old enough to play officially even though he has been hitting the ball ever since he could hold a bat. One problem though – he doesn’t like to hit off of a tee. His new favorite thing is to go into the netted batting cages, with his aluminum bat, a bucket of balls and hit the ball like the big boys do. This requires someone to pitch to him – that would be yours truly.
I was a mediocre softball pitcher in high school. My preference was centerfield but I would fill in as pitcher if need be. If I recall correctly the last time I pitched a softball game was on a co-ed slow pitch league. I took a line drive shot to the nose a few weeks before my wedding. Nothing a few stitches and an ice pack can’t fix. Where was I? Oh yes…
So we enter the cages and he is all excited. He is actually pretty good and keeping his eye on the ball. His problem is that he swings at EVERYTHING. He got tagged in the leg pretty good as he stepped toward a ball to try and hit it. He professes to me his frustration that I am NOT pitching fast enough (he’s almost 4, what does he know). I break out my fast pitch softball skills and zoom a few little balls right passed him. He laughs. He gets brave. He asks me to do it again. I oblige. First pitch hits the pad behind the batters box before he even got his bat ready. The second pitch wasn’t so lucky. The second pitch had a bounty on it’s head. My son was bound and determined to get a piece of it. Unfortunately it was an inside pitch, and as he brings his bat up the ball smashes his thumb against his little aluminum bat. The bat hits the ground. The child follows. I run over to him.
He is now screaming, crying and holding his thumb. Everyone in the ballpark is looking in our general direction to see what on Earth is making that horrible shrieking sound. It was my baby boy. I ask to see it and he reveals a big purple fingernail. OUCH!! Oddly, it didn’t look like a blood clot under his nail, it was just purple all over. Like the kind of purple created by holding your finger too tight. In an effort to calm him down I said “LOOK! You have a Barney Thumb! He laughed then proclaimed that I hurt him “on purfis”. That broke my heart. Although I didn’t intentionally hit his thumb with the ball – it was my actions that led him to have this huge purple thumb which now caused him an enormous amount of pain. After he was calm enough to stand on his own two feet, the little boy super hero went over and picked up the bat to have another go at it. I suggested that we go cool off and calm down for a little while longer, maybe find some ice for his thumb. He had other plans. He wanted to go show Daddy his Barney thumb. Dad was already aware of what had happened (as was most of the surrounding zip code). He proudly showed off his Barney thumb as well as the nice little ring left by the ball that hit him in the leg. Over the course of the weekend it became quite swollen. I wondered if I should take him to the doctors and have them take a look at it. He woke up Monday morning pretty oblivious to his purple thumb. It didn’t seem to faze him. He was playing as he normally would. Life just went on. Someone mentioned that the nail would probably fall off but I had hopes that the swelling would go down and he would be back to normal in no time. That is, of course, until we got a phone call from his daycare…
to be continued
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