Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Completely Traumatized!

KJ and I are pretty sure our son is going to need some psychological help to deal with the abject terror he felt for his life, not once, but twice last night!!!!
It all started with the remodel of our bathroom. There are some pretty interesting looking tools around the house right now. HJ has been warned not to touch them. However, the air compressor that is currently in our bedroom (come on I know everyone keeps one in their master bedroom, right) proved to be too much of a temptation! It is bright orange and has lots of fun looking knobs and dials on it. While KJ was talking to Drew last night in the bathroom, HJ must have been examining the air compressor. I was in the family room straightening up when I hear a very, very, very, loud hissing sound. A moment later, my son is screaming louder than the hissing and running faster than I have ever seen him run, down the hall from the master bedroom to the family room, and upon reaching me he makes an enormous leap into my arms, throwing his arms around my neck and anchoring his legs around my hips and burrowing his head into my neck. I am still bewildered trying to think about what the very loud whooshing/hissing sound is and if my son is hurt. The noise stops and Drew and KJ come out of the bathroom laughing until they see how absolutely terrified HJ is. He is sobbing uncontrollably and shaking violently from abject terror. It takes me 30 minutes to completely calm him down! Whereupon, we learn that when he pulled the release knob on the compressor, he got a face full of compressed air and a loud noise erupted from the machine that he wasn't supposed to touch because we told him they are dangerous. We think he thought he was going to die for a moment. It has put the fear of God into him, in regards to all the tools!
So after that terror, we finally get the kids to bed. I head to the kitchen and my bigger child, I mean my husband, goes down to the garage to play with his brand new toy, a gas blower. Being brilliant and too excited to think clearly, he starts the gas motor up inside the garage (luckily the garage doors were open!) and proceeds to check it out by blowing all the tile dust from Drew's tile cutting out of the garage, not paying any heed to the smoke coming from the blower. It sets the smoke detector off, but my child, I mean husband, can't hear it over the roar of the blower. Because all the smoke detectors are wired to each other, this sets off all the smoke detectors inside the house! Now, I have never heard the smoke detectors go off in our new house and they are ear drum shattering loud inside the house. They are so loud that I think the burglar alarm is going off, which is Drew's first guess too. So I am frantically punching in the code for the alarm over and over again to no avail! Drew gets the idea to hit the # and * button together thinking it will reset it. What that does is set the burglar alarm off and is the code to directly call the police department. Once the alarm goes off, we realize it is the smoke detector going off not the alarm and quickly turn the burglar alarm off. However, by that time the police have been called! I turn around to find my son, standing behind me shaking and sobbing, which I could not hear over the wail of the smoke detector. He thinks there is a fire and thought we had forgot about him in his room and he was going to die!!!! I scoop him up and try to console him over the wail of the smoke detectors. They finally go off once Drew goes down to tell KJ what is going on and he shuts his blower off and fans the smoke out of the garage. However, my son, not quite recovered from the night's earlier trauma is bewildered, terrified, and confused. He did not understand why the smoke detector went off accidentally and I had a really hard time convincing that this happens and we would never, ever forget him! I praised him for coming downstairs. THEN, the police arrived, which set off another round of questions and concerns! After laying with him for 30+ minutes and going up numerous times to calm him down after that, he finally fell asleep. My poor little boy is still talking about the terror of last night. Thankfully, it is behind us and hopefully we won't have that terrifying of a night ever again!

2 comments:

Aimee D said...

wow...the excitement! and i can totally see your big kid oblivious to the whole thing and playing (I mean working) in the garage while you guys are upstairs freaking out!

you know our little guy had an experience like that lately...where we say "no, don't do that or..." and what does he do? he does it. in our guys case he got a face full of cat scratch (well really just a good scratch down his cheek). If only it would continually remind him that we parents really do have their best interest at heart!

Joy said...

Wow! That is really really intense!!! I hope that rest came quickly and easily tonight for him!