the licorice prescription

     On Christmas Eve we get together with my side of the family. This year they had decided to not do our usual name drawing for gifts, but to instead give money to a couple from church who are soon to be leaving for a foreign mission field.
    We (Brian and I) thought that at least the children should get 'something', and so we personally got small gifts for them. After the dinner part, I explained this to everybody, along with reminding them about how when 'my Brian' use to cater all of the time, he'd wear a stocking cap and red shirt with black pants at Christmas time, and combined with his beard and build, tons of youngsters were convinced he WAS Santa! Therefore he was going to pass out the gifts for the kids.
    He gave four year old Eli his gift first. Eli was thrilled, both that mommy confirmed he really was getting a gift after all (so-o cute!), and when he discovered the "cool cars" inside the wrapping paper. He jumped up to stand on the couch to show it so everybody could see it :->.
    Eli was then only to happy to do the 'big brother thing' and open baby Nathaniel's rattle for him. ;-b
    Baby Xander wasn't in attendance, so his was given to his grandpa to take to him.
    Then 'my Brian' handed the last package in the basket (yes, they were in a cute basket .... your not surprised are you? o;-b) to my dad, "the biggest kid here". The chuckles in the room confirmed it.
    The gift was addressed to both Dad and Joan and contained a loaf each of pumpkin and banana bread and a prescription bottle of licorice jelly beans. See, both Dad and Joan love licorice, and I had just a small amount of them still stashed away, so I wanted to include it in the package, but what should I put them in? Most containers made the amount look pitiful. But a good sized empty prescription bottle worked perfectly!
    Brian then had the idea (which we acted on) of taking all of the little warning labels off of our various prescription bottles and putting them in a row down one 'side' of the prescription bottle containing the licorice :-b. Dad had Brian read all of them after he opened the gift. They said such things as "do not take with food", "open pill and sprinkle on to food to take", "take immediately after eating", and of course the "do not operate heavy machinery or drive while taking this medication ...". All of them on the same bottle made for some good chuckles!
    Dad and Joan were the first ones to leave the gathering that night. Shortly thereafter, Brent left to take Kayla home. About ten minutes after Dad and Joan had left, my sisters house phone rang. It was Joan, and she was all shook up, they had been in an accident ... . My sister had a hard time getting information out of her, but finally learned where they were. She convinced Joan that all of "the guys" were on their way, and that Joan had to hang up and call 911.
    Brian had immediately called Brent had instructed him to head that direction before taking Kayla home! Brent had four wheel drive, and experience with cars, and might be able to help .... .
    After most of "the guys" left, the rest of us got in a circle and started praying!!!
    It turned out that Dad and Joan were okay, just rattled. And their van had not been damaged that much. But the way they were hit would rattle anybody, and then there was the fact that not two weeks before, they had been hit by a good sized deer which had totaled their other van. A-n-d, Joan and her first husband had been involved in a couple of very serious accidents when he was alive ...
    This time, they had come upon a vehicle which was driving rather sporadically, and weaving. Then at one point, Dad had felt she was far enough over he could pass her if he did it quickly. Dad was a semi truck driver for h-o-w many years? He's got plenty of driving experience!! But when they were almost totally past her, she had headed back towards them and even seemed to speed up a bit, the end result of which was she had side swiped them. Unnerving! Dad had then come to a complete stop and was calling 911 (on his cell) to report the reckless driver, when the lady again hit them, twice, in the rear end. She had hit them, stopped, backed up, but then in the process of stopping again, had somehow rolled forward again - right into them!
    No wonder Joan was so shook up!!! Goodness!
    Our guys got there. The police got there. The police told my dad they were giving her (the other driver) the sobriety test only because they were suppose to, absolutely no doubt she would flunk it - badly!
     When we got home there was a message on our machine from my dad, saying they had made it the rest of the way home safely :-}
    The next day (Christmas day) I found this email in my in box from my dad:
    subject - "important"

":-} I am very happy that I had Brian read the things on the "prescription bottle" last night. How would I have explained my condition to the police officer if I had taken those "drugs"? o;-p Thank you again for the birthday gifts and the" goodies" last night . I 'm sure you know by now, that we got home o.k. after the accident.


Hope you all had a good day today.             Love you all, Dad"

L-O-L !!!!! ;-p