On Pumkins, cars and Knees

I always buy pumpkins to decorate with this time of year since my mother and father can't grow them anymore. The squash beetle simply feast upon them until there is nothing left unless they use high powered chemicals to keep them away.
They used to raise great pickup loads of pumpkins that the local raceway used and we all got free passes to the Halloween Classic. It was a wonderful place to take the boys when they were smaller. We would watch the races most of the afternoon and then take the boys back to the pits where all the racers and their families had converted their trailers and their little lots into a halloween wonderland.
There was everything from haunted house trailers to old graveyards with hilarious little sayings on the tombstones to the occasional car crash with various body parts scattered around and huge signs that told about the carelessness of driving too fast and under the influence of alcohol.

Well, those days have passed and my children have grown. They would still love to go to the halloween classic, but it wouldn't be to see the old hearse driving around with the guy dressed up and laying in a coffin. They would simply go for the cars.
The pumpkins wouldn't matter at all.
I really wish I didn't have to buy them, but I do and I always put them on my front step to usher in the autumn season. This year I went for 3 beautiful large pumpkins when I was in town Saturday.
Walmart was the cheapest, I found, and so I searched through them and bought 3 larger ones.
The largest we put on top of a boxed desk that Justin had bought while we were shopping and he was anxious to get it home. Kade scooted into the back seat of the Xterra and stretched his sore knee out by sticking his foot over the desk and into the corner of the vehicle opposite him.
Everything went well until we were rounding the last curve home. We could see the driver stopped on the corner waiting to turn onto the road doing one of those, "Should I go? Should I wait?" things and Justin slowed down a bit. The driver seemed to be looking in our direction ok and so Justin sped up again.
At that moment, the driver decided he may turn out after all and started out into the road. Justin slammed the brakes on slightly...nothing like my blowout though, just enough to make everything in the rig slide forward. The driver in the other car saw us and stopped again.
In the meantime, the large pumpkin had decided to take a little trip to the front of the car but the only think standing it its way was Kade's bad knee so it simply jammed Kade's foot in the corner a little deeper as it smashed into his painful appendage. I heard the scream and the huge "OOOOOWWWWW!" and knew exactly what had happened.
It didn't hurt it bad, just enough to make it tender again.
I bet it was funny this morning at therapy though, when he tried to explain why his knee hurt.
I can imagine the look on his face as he told his therapist that it was mom's pumpkin that attacked him!
I even weighed that huge pumpkin yesterday and found out that it weighed 25 pounds!
Well, it seems that at least for Kade pumpkins and knees do not do well when you put them in the back seat of the car together!