A-Maze-Ing Corn!

Just like last year, we went to a corn maze near Napoleon, Ohio, with Kara and Adam. But this year, Mom and Dad went with us, as well as my aunt and uncle, who were visiting from Godfrey, Illinois. The four of them had never done a corn maze before and we thought it would be fun to have them go along.

The maze design this year was in honor of Sam Hornish, Jr., winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 2006, who lives nearby. We divided up with the guys against the girls, to see who could finish in the quickest time. Last year, Kara and I beat Adam and Romie, so we had a title to avenge.

Kara and I led the way, with Mom and her sister chatting like magpies behind us. We had to find ten waypoints, which were numbered posts, where we had to make a decision as to which way to go, depending on the answers to question on a Passport we were given at the start.

In the middle of the maze is a tower, which you can climb to see the entire maze. You might think this would help you with the rest of the maze, but it's not tall enough to give that kind of a view. By the time we reached the tower and climbed to the top, we saw the guys way off in the distance and knew that they were way ahead of us and that we had some catching up to do!

Sure enough, they'd beat us by about ten minutes and they now had bragging rights as their prize. We'd had a pretty good time wending our way through the tall corn on a beautiful autumn afternoon, so we all were winners, really...

...until something went terribly wrong.

We wanted to take a group picture, and there were all kinds of places appropriate for doing this, but we chose the stacked straw bales with pumpkins and other fall decorations near the entrance to the maze. Everyone except me took their spots and I commented that there was nowhere for me to sit. Romie invited me to sit on his lap while I asked a nearby group if someone could take our picture. A young woman agreed and I handed over the camera.

What happened next was just a tad chaotic, with a couple members of the family offering alternative suggestions for where I might sit. Uncle Bob said I should sit on the ground in front of the group. As I started to do that, Kara interjected that I could lay on my side, across the guys' laps. Now that sounded like a fun idea, so I tried to quickly get myself in position so that the person taking the picture could go back with her group.

*snap*

What's wrong with this picture?

In my rush to get into position for the picture, I had accidentally elbowed my dad in the nose. He didn't say "Ow!" In fact, he didn't say anything until very quietly, we heard, "Wait. I've got a nosebleed." OMG. I hadn't even felt the contact, in all the hubbub. I felt awful!

He was really nice about it and every time I asked him later how his nose was or told him how sorry I was, he would smile and say, "It's okay. It doesn't hurt now." But I still felt terrible about it happening.

In spite of the mishap, we'd had a good time, but next year maybe I'll have to throw some punches before we do the maze so we girls can take our title back.