Give ‘Em Enough Rope…….

  

It was Christmas Eve.  Suzanne was singing in a choir concert at our church, the guys were in the family room watching TV and I was cooking dinner.

 

The bang was so loud that I thought a car had crashed through the front window of the house.  I immediately ran toward the living room. Only Mark suspected what had happened.  Unfortunately he was right.

 

As I approached the entry hall, I saw a frightening scene at the bottom of the stairs.  He was unconscious and his tied hands were blue. I screamed for Bob and pulled at the ropes. Then I realized that Mark was there holding up the chair with Chris in it. He had heard Chris calling him and sprinted to the hall managing to buffer his fall on the floor after he bumped down the 17 uncarpeted stairs, head first, tied to the chair. Jeff was there and ran to get Dad. I went to the kitchen for a butcher knife to cut the ropes.  Mark told me it was loose and he could untie it quicker than trying to cut the rope. By that time, Jeff and Dad had arrived in the hall and as Dad was picking up Chris his finger plunged into a deep gash at the base of his skull. The narrow backed desk chair had caused the laceration.

 

[It seems that Chris discovered that he could still stand, bent over, and walk while tied to the chair.  He wanted to show Mark that he could get away and he called for Mark from the top of the stairs.  Of course, the back chair legs caught the stair on his first step and started the fall.]

 

While Dad carried him to the family room sofa, I called the paramedics. Chris was beginning to regain consciousness and didn’t know what happened or that it was Christmas Eve.  The paramedics arrived and checked his condition.

 

While I was sitting on my desk and calling our doctor, two Orange police officers walked through the kitchen, gave me a strange look and continued into the family room. (I guess they always came to the scene when the Para-medics were called in those days.) The doctor said he would meet us at the emergency room.

 

We asked the neighbor to watch for Suzanne to come home and tell her what had happened.  She walked into the same scene the police saw when they arrived: an over turned chair, a large rope, a butcher knife and blood on the floor.  It was now clear why the police looked at me strangely.  (today, we would be charged with child abuse.)  Just try explaining that your child was tied to a chair and fell down the stairs…headfirst.  Incidentally, the blue hands were from Play-doh.

 

Fluid collected under the skin of his forehead and made him look hydrocephalic and as crinkly as tissue paper as it was reabsorbed. We had him sleep down stairs, near us, until he was better. He insisted that he wanted to go to his school Christmas party (Dec. 16th was the last day he remembered).  For the next three months we had to watch for any signs of a subdural hematoma. He has never remembered the incident.

 

Chris recovered, but I doubt Mark ever will.

 

The saddest part was:  Mark had given him a top of the line Pogo Stick for Christmas and he was never allowed to play with it……It just mysteriously disappeared.

 

December, 1970

 

MOM

 

PS:  More to come on the nine lives of one Rev. Christopher Robert Blaustone

 

PPS:  As you kids will undoubtedly remember, you played tie-up games with Dad many times with the large one inch nylon boat-line rope and the knots were never tight.  “The Houdini Blaustones.”