"That was a close one, Evelyn."

I was reading page 117 of "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio," and I was like, Wow! He (sorry, I should have said she!) really remembers this stuff. Also, now I think I am kind of traumatized.

Terry Ryan describes what happens after his oops I mean her mother trips and falls, accidentally shattering an entire delivery of milk bottles.

"In a house as crowded as ours, there were lots of crashes. As Mom balanced gingerly on her bleeding, hands and knees, she called out, 'Would someone please help me?' Dad snapped to, rushed out from the kitchen, and took one look at Mom, the milk, and the blood. 'Oh, Mother, what have you done?' he choked out and collapsed in a chair. Betsy ran down the stairs and stared at Mom with similar disbelief. 'Oh, Mom,' she said, and ran back upstairs, crying. Dave passed Betsy on the stairs, sat down hard, and began sobbing softly. Now the pink river of blood and milk had reached the corner and began spilling down into the heat register. Mom pleaded again, only louder this time, 'WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME?' That knocked Dad out of his stupor, long enough to get two paper towels from the kitchen and hand them to her before collapsing again into the chair, weeping. I stood frozen in the dining room, listening. Exasperated with us all, Mom groaned aloud as she hauled herself up off the floor."

(But then I was like, so we see that Dave and Betsy and Dad weren't able to pull it together. What was the narrator doing though? Maybe he, oops, she, doesn't remember? Maybe he, oops, she, was just frozen. Oh wait, go back. You just read that part, duh! Yes, that's what was happening. She was frozen.)

'"You know what the worst part of this is?' she announced to the nearly empty room. Incapable of speech, Dad shook his head. 'At least a quart of milk has been sucked up inside my girdle. That means I'm going to have to walk into the hospital with milk dripping from every pour. That means I'm going to have to walk into the hospital with milk dripping from every pore.'

The emergency room staff spent hours picking chunks and bits of glass out of her knees. 'That was a close one, Evelyn,' The doctor said. 'You barely missed severing a ligament.'"

Terry Ryan, page 117 of "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"

https://sharinghorizons.com/prize-winner-defiance-ohio/