Field Day

Field Day is a momentous event at Ella’s school. And 2025 will always be the day that Daddy ruined Field Day.

Barksdale Field Day is quite a spectacle. Hundreds of parents volunteer to see their kids compete in a dozen activities. It is the epitome of parental joy to watch your child run the three-legged race, stumble through the obstacle course, and slide down the slip and slide, all performed with an enormous smile on their face.

The day started out great. Ella and I put on our official Field Day shirts and walked to the bus stop. As we walked to the bus stop, Ella proclaimed, “It’s Field Day. This is the best day ever.”

Field Day starts with an Olympic-style processional as each grade walks to the starting line in matching team t-shirts. As the first graders marched toward the start, Ella saw me and jumped up and down yelling, “Daddy! Daddy! It’s Field Day!”

I volunteered to man the slip and slide, which was Ella’s second event of the day. Her first two runs were great as she grabbed a floaty and zoomed down the hill laughing the entire way.

And then disaster struck. On her third run, she asked, “Daddy, can you give me a push?” She sat on top of an inner tube, and I came in behind her and gave her a shove. She barely made it a few feet down the slide when she fell off the back of the tube and landed flat on her back. She landed so hard that it knocked the wind out of her.

I remember the panic that sets in the first time you get the wind knocked out of you. You think you are going to die. So did Ella. She started crying and yelled, “Daddy, am I going to live?”

There is no worse feeling than looking at your child’s tear-soaked eyes as she wonders why you tried to kill her.

I would love to tell you that Ella got over it, but that’s not how Ella processes trauma. She wasn’t the same for the rest of Field Day. When I picked her up from the bus after school, she handed me her backpack and walked to the house without saying a word to me. She seemed fine by the time we started our Friday ritual of getting ice cream after school, but I think that had more to do with the ice cream than with me.

I certainly haven’t mastered this parenting thing. Sometimes I try as hard as I can and still lose. I just hope when it is all said and done that I can count more victories than losses. I’m going to take the “L” on Field Day 2025. Now, I need some major victories to make up for this. This was Field Day. I didn’t lose a pre-season warm-up. I just lost a playoff game at home.