We went to the fair again today with my neighbor and her two children. My son and daughter were both excited to spend some time with their close friends going on rides and eating fair food. We arrived early and beat a lot of the crowds. The children went on the big slide gliding down on a burlap sack many times before we convinced them to move to something else.
It was a sunny day and the temperature, while initially chilly, had warmed up and the weather was quiet clement. I was thinking about how lovely the sunny day had turned out when suddenly I realized I hadn’t put sunscreen on my head scar. The one where I bashed my head open with a glass during our annual trip to New Jersey.
Crap. Drat. This isn’t good. The fresh scar was about the same color as my skin, in part because I’d been keeping the sun’s rays blocked from hitting it. A fresh scar will turn red with sun exposure. I’d been diligent in protecting the scar but this morning I’d forgotten sun screen.
I asked our friend if she had any sunscreen in her backpack or even a bandaid but she had nothing. So I went on a hunt for help. The information booth was close to us and the man there pointed to a second booth, saying they could help me there with any medical needs.
The second booth wasn’t really set up to be a true first aid I could tell because there was an older man dressed in what looked like a highway patrol uniform who greeted from the small, round booth. Did he have a bandaid, I asked? He looked at me slowly and pulled something out of his breast pocket, looked at it and then pulled out a second thing.
The second thing turned out to be a very, very tiny first aid kit. Without a word he extracted and handed me a bandaid. Then he asked me if I was okay. So I had to explain about the scar and the sunscreen. I told him all about the baby deer I had saved from the barbed wire, only to be kicked in the face by a hoof. Then I said, “do you have some scissors?”
I wasn’t particularly hopeful because this little booth didn’t look all that well-equipped. The main first aid station is significant and extensive, but it was a quarter mile away and I didn’t feel like walking that far.
But this man with his slow manner reached into his pocket and pulled out a pocket knife. While he did this I told him that baby deer story was complete fiction and the real truth was completely due to my clumsiness. Now that he understood that I wanted a small section of the sticky part of the bandaid to cover the scar to block the sun’s rays, he had a plan with the bandaid and his pocket knife.
I was to hold the bandaid on either side and he was going to slice down and cut me off a small section. I held and he cut. And then I put the small bit onto my scar with him making sure I had it positioned right. He took the rest of the bandaid and put it back into his tiny first aid kit and I thanked him. He didn’t have a lot to say but his booth had everything I needed.
The Big Boy Update: My son rode on a ride that spun around today at the fair. When he got off I asked him if the ride was fun. He told me, “I’m fine but a little bit of fainting”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: As we were leaving the fair today my daughter saw several new cars being showcased from local dealerships. I have no idea what prompted it but she told me, “it would be nice if we could win a new car for Nana for Christmas.” I told her that would definitely be nice. As we got home, literally one hour later, we got a text from Papa showing Nana standing beside a new car—a car we didn’t even know she was planning on getting. I guess my daughter will have to come up with another Christmas present for Nana now.
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