"It Can Kill Brain Cells" or "Uh, Greg?"

A Family Heirloom Story by Timothy

At dinner, Greg and I were goofing off and making funny faces for Zachary. In one, I held my breath. As my face turned shades of red and purple, Mom noticed and told me not to do that. "Holding your breath for too long is not good for you." she said. "It can kill brain cells." Greg and I stopped goofing around and dinner continued uneventfully.

At bedtime that night though, Gregory and I got silly again and began to make faces in the mirror while brushing our teeth. Melody was there too, all three of us crowded around the sink frothing at the mouth with toothpaste and laughing loudly.

"I don't think this kills brain cells." Greg said with a wry smile and he puffed up his cheeks in a dramatic expression of breath holding. Not just your ordinary breath holding though. He did his best to tense his face to make it all red. He began a slow motion fall away from us to his left. There was a great thud as he hit the floor. I felt for sure he was just joking around, so I kept right on brushing. Dad, having felt the thud from the kitchen just on the other side of the wall, came running in to hear Melody say, "Uh, Greg? At that same moment. Greg began to shake. Dad, ran to him and gathered him up and he quite shaking. He looked up into Dad's face and asked, "What happened?" That is when I realized that Greg wasn't joking around. He had fallen because he passed out. He narrowly missed hitting his head on the tub, but when his shoulder hit the tiled floor there was enough force that a tile broke.

We all felt shaken as we walked out of the bathroom together, Dad holding Gregory up to be sure that there would be no repeat performance. We all made our way to where Mom was working. Melody teased her that she missed all the excitement, and we told her what happened. She had heard the thud too, but because she heard us all giggling and goofing off just before it she figured that we were just being silly in there. She felt bad that she didn't run to investigate. But she was right about holding your breath being a bad idea. It CAN kill brain cells. My brother nearly had a concussion.

Back when John's mom was alive, we used to travel up the mountain about once a month for a weekend visit. Timothy, who was about 2 years old at the time, had a passion for all things that go: cars, trucks, trains, etc. That was before he discovered computers. LOL. One of his favorite toys was a big ring of real keys that John had made up for him. He would get in the cozy coupe and 'start the engine' with one of his keys and head off to 'wok'.

During one visit, John felt tired from a long workweek so he laid down to catch a quick catnap while his Mom and I visited and prepared lunch. As he lay there drifting, little Timothy padded to the sliding glass door and began a little conversation with himself. John was so sleepy that he only partially listened until he heard Tim say with determination, "No back seat. I drive it." with a little faint jingle of keys. John's eyes opened wide. He would later relate to us that if he had heard the door open, he knew right where the lad was heading, straight to the car - the real one.

Monday we worked on personal narratives in homeschool. Gregory and Melody had a few lively life experiences to write about, but poor Timothy sat and sat trying to think of some really interesting life experience that he had had that were his own alone. Literally hours passed by. I began to press him to get to work since it was obvious that several other school assignments were already pushed out of the day's schedule because he was stalled on this assignment. Well, it was one of those moments where I realized that I was focusing on the schedule and not on my son. He slipped away to the bathroom and I could tell he was crying. I felt like such a heartless fool. When he came out I sat beside him. He quietly poured out his feelings. "I don't have a life, mom. Nothing interesting happens to me. Gregory broke his tooth and went to 'disaster camp'. Melody has gone on neat youth group trips and had oral surgery." I countered with several family moments that I thought were quite interesting for a personal narrative. My suggestion - The winter storm of 2000 when we went nine days without power. Tim's counter - That was everybody. Greg and Melody could write about that too. It isn't a *personal* narrative. My suggestion - How about the time we accidentally left you in the car at church when you were 4? This is an admission of guilt friends. Yes, we really did misplace him. Worse yet, another church member noticed he was in the car alone. We hadn't even missed him. We thought he ran in with the older kids and they thought he was with us. Doh! Tim's counter - "No, I had fun. That doesn't make a good story." Well, at least that eased my feelings of guilt a bit. LOL. Several other adventures were suggested, but many of those he didn't remember well himself. They were more stories that we had told him he experienced. So we sat there, we two, for 30 minutes. Me making story suggestions and him shooting every one down.

Yes, we finally got a narrative out of him. And through the struggles, I came up with the idea to make a new category on my blog called "Family Stories" in which those priceless stories worthy of passing down can be put to print and shared. I am going to have the kids work on one or two family/individual memories each week and post them. They may be entries as short as a note of a cute saying that one of the kids often said when they were learning to talk to the grand family adventures like the winter storm of 2000 or teenager John (yes, that is my hubby) pouring vanilla extract on his arm, lighting it, and scaring the Dickens out of a co-worker saying "You are the one." when she passed down a darkened stairway. Now what kind of a nut would even come up with the idea to do such a thing much less actually do it!  Yes folks, you are in for many such adventures from my John. How he survived this long amazes me. Thankfully, the kids' awe of his adventures go only so far as asking to hear them over and over and not trying such stunts themselves. LOL But I am going to keep my eyes on Tim, just to make sure he has safe indvidual adventures.

First story entry coming soon.