Heads Up

Okay, so it was a rough night all around. Stanford was down at the half for the first time all year, Arizona State coach Charli Turner Thorne was whistled for a technical in the second half, C’s son had a head injury and had to go to the emergency room…

Okay, let’s back it up a little. Just as C and R were pulling into the stupid Stanford dirt lot around 6:20 PM to park and go see the Stanford women’s basketball team take on Arizona State, C’s cell phone rang. Now, no one calls C’s cell phone except for R, and R was sitting right beside her driving, so she almost didn’t answer it. But she pulled it out and the little light up area said it was her son. C’s son has had a cell phone for about two years and he never talks on it. But he does average something like 50 texts a day. Does any one of those texts ever go to his mother? No. He uses his cell phone to text with pretty blonde girls and everyone else in the known universe, except his mother, so when C saw it was from her son, and a phone call even, not a text, she just knew it was trouble. Sure enough, after answering it, C’s son said his head was bleeding.

Turns out, C’s son was at water polo practice and he swam into the metal water polo goal post and split his head and was bleeding. R, listening in to C’s part of the conversation and made a U-turn in the dirt lot and said, “I’ll do whatever you need to do.” R’s good like that. She even offered to jump out so C could have the car and R would find a way home, hitch-hike or something, but C and R decided R should drive them both back to C’s house, and that’s how C and R missed the game. We had our tickets in our hands, too.

We want to give a big shout out apology to our number one fan (NOF), who we were supposed to meet up with at halftime and present her with one of our patented C and R logo polo shirts (Still on sale for $40! See the ad on this page!). Sorry NOF, and we will catch you Saturday!

So, after C got home, grabbed her insurance card, jumped in her car to pick up her son at the practice pool, she finally remembered to turn on the radio and tune into KZSU. Too bad it was half time and she couldn’t tell the score. Ya ever seen that civil war or revolutionary war poster of the three men playing the fife and drum and carrying the flag and one of them has their head all wrapped up and bleeding? Well, that’s what C’s son looked like as he emerged from the locker room, so she chucked plans to go to the urgent care and head straight to the hospital. C called R at home, who decided it wasn’t worth it to drive all the way back to Stanford and was trying to get Gametracker on her computer, to help her find the nearest hospital that took C’s insurance, and they decided on the one C’s son was born at 16 years ago.

In between C’s son’s proud soliloquy about how he got the head wound (his friend pushed him into the post as they were doing a drill battling for the ball) and the detail about just how much blood leaked out (quite a lot, and if you are squeamish, don’t read how he relished telling me how it gushed down his face and all over his chest), C turned on the radio and found out the second half had started and Stanford had gone on a 7-1 tear in the first three minutes to go up 34-30. (And if you are worried R is going to be mad at C for that extremely long run on sentence, don’t worry, we lost her at “blood” and she’s passed out on the floor back here). Wait, if we scored seven points and are only ahead by four…C tried to mentally calculate in the car but it was hard as she had to block out her son’s description about how the blood caked in his eye and he couldn’t open it... then we were behind at half… C’s son said his coach thinks they will need to shave the area around the wound and is now asking C if he can shave ALL his hair off…  how did we get behind? (Yes, C found out later we were behind 29-25 Arizona State). And oh, he has a picture on his cell phone of the bloody wound. I am sure he has sent it to all his girl friends by now. 

Finally we are at the hospital and they unwind the headscarf he has going on, decide to use staples instead of stitches and he can keep his hair, which I think disappointed him. The wound is pretty deep, and more severe than C was lead to believe by the coach. After cleaning the blood, the doc comes to numb and add the staples. He pulls out a sanitized stapler. I am not kidding. It looks like the stapler C uses to hang her student’s art shows. The doc says they need to come out in 8 days, and says they use a staple remover pretty much like the one C has at home. 

However, on the ride back the Stanford game is over and KZSU is playing calming Indian music, just what we need because C and her son are now discussing “Doing-it-yourself” surgery and how to remove the staples themselves with their staple remover in a week to save a trip to the doc. Water polo players are tough! 

C calls R and she tells her Stanford won! She has trouble with Gametracker, but the final score was 71-48, Stanford. What? Stanford was barely ahead when C last tuned in Then R tells C we were trailing by as much as 14 points in the first half! Later, the Internet said Stanford was rattled by early pressure and full court presses (What’s new) by Arizona State, but then went on a 35-5 scoring spree in teh second half, and Charli Turner Thorne got the technical. Boy, both C and R wished they could have seen that! We wonder if it was for walking on our court with her pointy high heels? Somebody who was there, please tell us what happened! 

Guard Ros Gold-Onwude had three threes and a career high 19 points. Kayla Pederson was finally back in her scoring form and scored 23. Jayne Appel added 12. Our high scorer and PAC-10 scoring leader, Nneka Ogwumike, was on the bench for almost half the game because of foul trouble and only scored 8 points. Oregon State couldn’t stop Nneka the other day, but Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer can if she fouls. Just think if we could ever get all three of our tall players, Kayla, Jayne and Nneka to score in double figures in one game. 

C’s son is resting comfortably, thank you for asking, after eating nearly everything in the house after he got home from the hospital. Email us with your observations of the game if we left anything out.