The Story of How I Passed Out by Andrew Hunter

So, it’s been awhile. We just got back from our summer trip to see my husband’s family. While we were there, my father-in-law asked why I hadn’t written for the blog in awhile. I just kind of shrugged. I guess I got out of the habit of it, and I was trying to keep my house clean and get ready for the upcoming school year and do this creative project with my brother (more on that at the end, if you’re interested). But here’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in the past month…only, it didn’t happen to me, it happened to Andrew. Here’s his version of events…

[Andrew, age 8, recounting his ordeal, dictated to Mom on Tuesday, July 23, 2024. Lots of giggling removed].

“We were at the security line. And everything started looking dark. And then I just leaned on Mama. Unnoticed, my eyes were closed. And when I woke up, a bunch of ladies were looking at me. And two guys took me to the infirmary. One of the guys knew about Star Wars, and then I had some Gatorade. The End.”

This is his new favorite story. He was gleefully telling it to his aunt and uncle not twelve hours after the events in question. I don’t know what he means by ‘unnoticed, my eyes were closed’. I think he meant ‘unconscious’.

I enjoy the retelling far less, but if any of you want to know what happened in the security line at the airport, here’s my version:

The morning our annual summer vacation began, everything was going great. We had packed everything, we had little to no traffic on the way to the airport, and Andrew was so excited, he wasn’t even annoyed about having to leave the house at 6 a.m. He’s a quotable lad, and he gets energized about things that might seem mundane to others. He was announcing the following on the way to Dallas: “I can’t wait to be reunited with an airport I thought I’d never see again!” He lives in his own little epic poem. 

He leapt out of the car with joy, carrying his BB8 backpack, wearing his little baseball cap, and dressed in the appropriate air-travel layers, including a T-Rex sweatshirt. 

Thom was checking bags, so my son and I went ahead and got in the security line. Like I said, we do this every summer, and every autumn too, if we’re lucky. He knows the drill. The guy reading boarding passes asks his name, the people in front of us smile at his lack of volume control, I take my shoes off, and I explain how TSA works in ever-more-elaborate detail the older he gets. Things were still going great…we were making good time.

As we were standing in line to walk through the metal detector, Andrew started to whine about how he hadn’t taken his allergy medicine. “Oh, you’re right, we didn’t,” I realized. My heart sank—he wouldn’t have remembered that unless something was bothering him. His throat must be hurting…and his cousins had strep. Great. “It’s ok, buddy, we’ll get you some Tylenol when we get through security,” I assured him. And that was that.

Andrew almost never complains about ailments. I usually know he feels nauseated about half a second before he pukes. He’ll tell me if his throat hurts, though; once, in another airport, a lady sat down next to him at the gate, and asked cheerily, “How are you today?” He replied, “Not great, I have drainage.” Like I said…quotable. 

But the fussing…didn’t stop. 

All of this happened in about half a second. At least, I think it did. Time feels disjointed in this memory. But I do remember him saying this: “It’s starting to seem dark.”

All the airport noise—the TSA guys hurrying us along, the people behind me talking about their plans, passengers throwing out questions about ‘can I keep my belt on?’—drowned out his complaint for about two breaths. I heard it, but it didn’t register. Then he slumped against me—all the weight of his 65 pounds pressed against my side, and he wasn’t answering me. He’d fainted. 

I lowered him down on his back. I shouted for help. The likely and unlikely reasons for him to lose consciousness out of the blue swirled around my mind—seizure? Heart attack? I remembered ‘airway, breathing, circulation’, from my annual First Aid training, and I put my fingers where I could feel his breath. I looked down blankly at his paper-white face.

Women came out of the woodwork—taking his pulse, asking his name—I don’t remember any of their faces. A voice yelled out, ‘is anyone a doctor?’ THAT face I remember—the lady with the red hair who asked if she could help me. By then, he was awake again. He was awake again.

I pulled him into my lap, told him that he’d passed out and that it would be okay, apologized to everyone for yelling for help, then looked up just in time to see the EMS guys show up with a comically-large stretcher for a little boy. By this point, Andrew was ready to be done—waking up on his back on an airport floor was not as fun as he makes it sound in the retelling. 

“Mom, what’s going on?” He asked, as his Dad and I followed him down the blank hallway to the infirmary.

“It’s ok, the nurses need to check you out,” I told him. “You fainted, so they have to. Listen,” I said, quickly jumping to what I would do in his situation, “remember every detail of what happens next…it’s going to be a great story.”

And there it is. Everybody in question handled this situation very well, from the three guys in the infirmary that checked his blood sugar and talked to him about Star Wars for ten minutes, to the people in line who jumped into action, to the doctor who I’m reasonably sure was a person and not an angel…and Andrew, who, once he had a full bottle of Gatorade in him, spent the rest of the day reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid on the airplane and assuring me, full voice in various crowded venues, “Mom, you did the right thing calling for help! I’m fine, it’s over!” And riding the moving sidewalks in the Baltimore Airport with his hand out and his sweatshirt tied over his shoulder, grinning at passersby. He looked like he was on a yacht.

I like to make things funny. Comedy is born out of trauma or at least inconvenience, most of the time. I did not find this in any way funny. I spent the rest of the day staring into space, texting with my sister and Mom, and thanking God that nothing was wrong with him…he has some of the same problems I do, it could have been so much worse…

The other night, I was reading some of my first few entries on this blog—they were so long ago. He’s eight years old now, and he has his own sense of humor, his own way of narrating his experiences, his own memories. I thought it fitting that he tell you guys the story first—he wants everyone he knows to hear it. Mission accomplished. The older he gets, he and I are going to have our own separate memories of shared events, and his are going to be his own property, his own comedic material. 

He’s a big kid. And he’s so little.

This summer, for the first time in his life, I couldn’t carry him. He’s almost as tall as I am; I couldn’t pick him up. 

All right, I have to go—he’s sitting across from me with a bunch of blocks and these seven plastic dinosaurs. It’s a Dino Playplace, he says, and two Ankylosaurs are staring at me, open-mouthed. He says they’re trying to distract me. It’s working. As if I wasn’t thinking about him all the time, every day, and will be even when he’s my age, and older. When he has to carry ME. 

And now for something fun and lighthearted! 

The creative project I’ve been working on is…a podcast! My brother and I host a podcast called Dan Made Me Watch This. It’s us recapping and reviewing movies from his hundred or so favorites. Some of them, I like—some of them, Dan had to make me watch. We’re hilarious, and clean, and you should tell your friends about us. It’s available on Spotify, and the first movie we review is the 1989 Batman. Either way, thanks for reading, Team 🙂