The Incident "Black Out"

It was three year ago today that I had my most terrifying life experience. The day started out like any other day. I woke up, educated the youth of America, and scurried home quickly to beat the weekend traffic to head up north.

We had a seasonal trailer in Sturgeon Bay, which we had not been up there since last October. My wife (Sarah) and I were excited to take our son (Carter) camping for the first time that year. He was only 10 months old.

After making the exciting three-hour drive up north, with a 10 month old, we needed to get all of our stuff unpacked and organized. I figured we had all weekend to work on things around the trailer, so I wasn’t going to go to crazy that first night. I turned on the water, water heater, electricity, carried the dogs cage in and of course made sure the T.V. worked.

My parents and brother had campers right next to ours. The Friday night ritual was once everyone got up north, got unpacked, we would make frozen pizzas, have a few drinks and sit around the fire. Once I carried in our suit cases, fed the dogs and were settled in, we went over to join the rest of the family for pizzas and drinks.

After eating and sitting around the fire for a bit, it started to get chilly out. After all, it was May in northern Wisconsin. Sarah said she was going to take Carter inside and put him to bed. She decided to stay inside with him too because it was to cold out. I figured it had been a long week and I might as well call it a night too. I said goodnight to everyone and told my mom I would be over for coffee in the morning.

I went inside, turned on the T.V., the furnace and did a few odds and ends inside the trailer to get organized. Once the trailer warmed up and things were put away, I decided to call it a night. I crawled in bed and was ready to get a good night sleep so I could get the rest of the work done tomorrow.

Sometime in the middle of the night I heard Carter crying, which was not like him at all. He is a tremendous sleeper for an infant. I rolled over and the nice guy that I am, I told Sarah I would go rock him. I walked to the back of the trailer, picked him up out of his pack-n-play and rocked him for a few minutes. While I was rocking him I started to feel light-headed and nauseous. I figured I should probably sit down. Last thing I needed to do was pass out and drop Carter! After holding him and sitting for a little bit, he finally fell back asleep. I put him back in the pack-n-play to sleep peacefully for the rest of the night.

While I was rocking him I noticed the furnace did not shut off and it didn’t seem very warm in the trailer anymore. On my way back to bed, I put my hand by one of the vents and it was blowing cold air. Great! We must have run out of propane. I put on a shirt, went outside and switched over to the other gas bottle. I went back inside and waited a while. Once I felt warm air coming out again, I crawled back into bed. I could finally get some sleep. Little did I know how long I was going to be able to sleep for and just how lucky I would be to ever open my eyes again!

Lesson: Never go to bed angry! Tell those close to you how much they mean to you everyday! You never know when, or if you will get another chance to tell them again!