Nicky's Rolling Racer Mishap

The entry for Tuesday, August 26, 1986, was supposed to be about the family's planned Family Home Evening. Instead, the evening took a sharp turn.

Eleven-year-old Nicky decided to play with five-year-old Matthias' new "Rolling Racer" scooter, but rather than sitting on it properly, he "misused (kneeled on to ride) one of Mathias' new Rolling Racers, fell and split his chin". The laceration wasn't gushing, but Dad could see it was serious enough that it "would have left a nasty scar without stitching".

Instead of Family Home Evening, Mom and Dad took Nicky to their friend Dr. James Allison's office, and "we spent the evening with James at his office stitching it up".

The ordeal wasn't a total loss for Nicky, though. On the way home from getting stitches, Dad bought him a Dairy Queen Blizzard, which immediately "engendered much speculation about which of the kids would need stitches next".

Dad's journal entry for the next day, August 27, puts the incident in context: "Today is our twentieth wedding anniversary. It is also the start of my week's vacation from the office". After the stitches debacle, the anniversary celebration was modest. They thought about going to a restaurant but "ended up at the movies, seeing Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which we all thoroughly enjoyed".