"It's.....BLOOOOOOD!!!!

My son, when he was younger, had an aversion to the sight of blood, especially his own.  He has since gotten over that problem, thank goodness, but back then it upset him to no end.

It was a Sunday morning, and he and his father were out in the back yard, his father throwing horseshoes while he was playing something else.  I was in the kitchen cooking breakfast and talking to my mother on the phone, when I suddenly heard this ear-piercing scream coming from the back yard, and in races my son with his father following close behind.  All I saw was my son with his hand over one eye, and blood dripping through his fingers as he ran through the house to the bathroom, still screaming.  The only thing that came to my mind was, "Oh my god, he's lost an eye!"

My mother asked what was going on, and I replied that I'd have to call her back and hung up the phone, then went to see what had happened.

It turned out that as my husband had reached back with the horseshoe in his hand to throw, my son had been right behind him (which he'd been warned not to do, of course!), and it caught him in the face.  My husband was shook up as well, and kept asking did he need stitches, until I told him that he was just making our son worse, so he needed to leave the room, which he did.

My son, meanwhile, continued screaming at the top of his lungs, over and over, "It's bloooood; it's bloooood!" until I told him he needed to stop screaming so that I could find out where the blood was coming from.  I took a wet rag and wiped the blood away, thankfully seeing that his eye was fine.  The blood was coming from a split in his skin on the bone just above his eyebrow, where the horseshoe had clipped him, and with a bit of cleanup, antiseptic and a bandage, everything went back to a semblance of normalcy.

Somehow, despite both my son and my husband's reactions, I managed to remain calm and do what needed to be done.  I think I realized that someone needed to be the voice of reason throughout the ordeal, as they both were just making each other worse!

As it turned out, my son didn't need stitches.  But he still has a scar to remind him of what happens when you don't follow directions.  Horseshoes are really hard and heavy.