Abe can't let go. One of the funniest things ever.

For most folk this would be a horrific story about the time their little brother damn near broke his back. That is not how it played out in front of my twelve year old eyes. Every escalation that occurs in this story only made it funnier to me. For the briefest moment I was kinda scared for Abe's life, but only briefly. First a picture, taken a few minutes after the story. I show it first so that you can get a feel for the players involved, save Grandma, who took the photograph.

So we're all pulling stoic faces here like we're in a god damned tintype. The big fella in the cowboy hat is Dennis, my old man's friend. Then his son David, who is not dressed for hauling hay. Then Jake, me and Abe in descending order. And the old man, note his and Abe's faces.  Abe is frazzled, and I get a hint of relief in Dad's expression.

Look at the photo again, see the hay wagon and the layers of bales that rise out of frame. The top of that stack is where our story starts.

So we loaded the wagon, this was later in the afternoon and I think it was the last load of the day. Now to get to where we unloaded the hay we had to drive between these two sheds which had a low hanging electric cable strung between them. We had taken the tractor and wagon through here a number of times and it required someone on the stack to lift the power line up and over and guide it back until the wagon was passed (it didn't have juice running through it or the rubber on the tires kept us from grounding, I don't know). I had previously done this without fail, and on this last time also handled the task. This time though Abe had ridden in from the field with me on top of the stack. And as we approached the wire everything seemed fine.

The tractor was inching along as the wire reached the stack and I reach down and pulled it up above the first row. Now then the tricky part here (I say this for Abe's sake) is to step over the wire as it skids along the top row of bales. I do this easily, as I've already done it before, Abe on the other hand latches onto the thick cable. Again the tractor is moving very slowly so he's got time, with about ten or twelve feet to go before he gets swept off the back of the stack, but he won't let go of the wire. I'm yelling at him, from the ground Dad is yelling at him to just let go, but he couldn't. He did attempt to step over once or twice, but the movement of the wagon and the wire and everything must have been too much for Abe. Look at the picture again, look how old he was; he's a little kid and for whatever reason he got scared in that moment. I can't fault him for freezing up and just hanging on.

But hanging on meant he was about to get yanked off the back of that wagon. Perhaps I froze too, as I didn't reach him before we completely passed under the wire and he slid off. What happened in the next thirty seconds comprise one of the most vivid memories in my little pea brain. He slid off, but he didn't come free of the wire instantly, he bobbed twice. He was about right in the middle of the span and it had some spring to it. He sank then sprang up and sank again. When the cable tried to pull him up a third time he lost his grip and fell. We'll say it was ten, at best twelve feet to the ground, but again he is tiny. That's a helluva fall for a seven year old.

We're in an old barn lot and the ground is pretty much just dirt, there are rocks here and there, but luckily where he lands is just solid earth. Abe fell for what seemed like minutes to me as I watched from the hay stack. And he landed flat on his back, sorta spread eagle in the dirt. This is bad, right? It was all kinda funny to me up until he hit the dirt. It was odd that he wouldn't let go of the wire, he looked funny getting drug along the top of the stack, and then it was funnier watching him flail as he bobbed up and down in the air. When he hit the ground though it was hard, and it looked bad, and for an instant I was scared shitless he was really hurt. Then he moved.

He raised his head, which is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. He's flat out spread eagle and completely motionless and then his head tilted up, just his neck his shoulders still firmly on the ground, and seemingly expels every ounce of air in his little lungs in one long exhalation. In that moment he was a Loony Tunes character, he was the coyote falling off the cliff. Just the look on his face and that forced exaggerated breath puts a smile on my face every time I think of it (I'm a dick of a brother I know this). All he needed to complete the scene would have been for his feeble little hand to raise one of those wooden signs with OUCH! painted on it.

But he didn't raise a sign, he just lay there in the dirt, motionless. Dad stood him up, which Abe managed rather well, and proceeded to check him over. Abe could stand, he was fully aware of everything, and besides his eyes being the size of saucers seemed to be in working order. Something wasn't right though as a long moment stretched with the old man kneeling in front of his littlest. Abe seemed incapable of drawing a breath. His little feet began to shuffle in place as he tried to gasp for air, but his lungs wouldn't work. Simply put he couldn't breathe. As a parent in this situation you want your kid to start breathing again, so Dad shook him a little and gives him a couple good swats to the back. Sorta knock the wind back into him.

Now this is where Grandma comes into it. I'll be honest I was climbing down off the hay stack when she reached the situation, but as I came around the side of the wagon she had slid in front of Abe and was coaxing him to restart his lungs by grabbing him by the shoulders and yelling 'BREATHE' into his face.  It's her youngest grandchild she was rather concerned, but it was funny to see.

Finally he sucked in a huge gulp of air and began to breathe regularly after a second. The fact that he couldn't breathe does seem alarming in hindsight, but the scene was funny. The adults yelling at him, his failed attempts to do something so basic, and the whole while he looked in perfect working order. I was twelve, he didn't look in pain so I figured he was fine, obviously there are innumerable things that could have been wrong, but I didn't know those things at the time. In the end he was fine, and as soon as we got home we relayed the story to Mom, my version considerably lighter than Abe's and Dad's.