First (and hopefully ONLY)

I took my first (and hopefully ONLY) trip to the emergency room of the summer last night.

Whenever parents call me to ask about safety, and they fret about archery or swimming or any of the other programming, I always secretly roll my eyes. It's not that they shouldn't worry about safety, I understand the concern, it's just that those aren't the places kids get hurt. Kids get hurt one of two ways: running or messing around. Last night, it was running.

A girl (C) was running away from a counselor while playing freeze tag, tripped, landed wrong, and broke her collarbone. Kids fall every day, usually they bounce back up, every now and then, they don't. I don't mean to be so casual about it, safety is my FIRST and MAIN priority every minute of every day, but I'm not going to freak out about something that was not preventable and where no one did anything wrong. It was just one of those things that sometimes happens when kids are doing anything more than sitting.

I called her parents and let them know "everything is fine, C is fine. I will let you talk to her in just a minute, but she did have a small accident and we will be taking her to the emergency room." They were super calm, she was calm and then I took her to the emergency room. They X-rayed her, put her in a sling, gave her some pain medication and we were set. She doesn't want to change her activities, and she is ABSOLUTELY going on the overnight trip with her group. Awesome, that makes it easy for me.

It is never good when a kid gets hurt, but overall, this went as smooth as a situation like this can go. Hopefully it's the only one of the summer.