So you think you're tough?!

         

   So you think you’re tough . . . sitting there on your inner-city stoop, listening to the rhythm of the drive-bys on the next block?
          Think you’re tough . . . watching Bruce Willis “dying” hard and telling yourself, “Yah, I could do that”?
          Or . . . nursing a paper cut and trying to decide if you can finish work at the office or go home early.
          I’ll tell you what’s tough: A quiet Amish man who gets run over by a 1,000-pound planter, is impaled by one of the planter’s steel plow shoes and is then dragged 80 yards by a team of four spooked horses.
          That’s tough.  And then the Amish man, bleeding profusely from a three-inch gash on the side of his head and an eight-incher on his leg, whispers to his distraught 12-year-old, “No, don’t call 911, just call Larry and tell him to bring his pickup.”
          It’s tough to choke back the tears when you arrive at the edge of the field and see how crumpled your friend is.
          It’s tough to avoid arguing with him when he asserts that he wants no ambulance, “Just get me to the emergency room, and I’ll be all right.”
          It’s tough driving 12 miles through the tourist clog in Amish Country with him quietly groaning at every pavement joint, crack or pothole.
          And what a relief to pull up to the ER, where a doctor, two nurses and a gurney are waiting, thanks to the modern miracle called a cell phone.  They did a quick check, stabilized him and shipped him off in a screaming ambulance to a big-city trauma center.  His injuries were severe.
          Now, here’s what’s really tough: 
          He had six broken ribs, several deep wounds requiring a lot of cleaning and many stitches.  Oh, and a severe concussion.
          And two weeks later, as I strolled in the yard behind the Indiantree Farm guesthouse, I heard a familiar sound in the hayfield a few yards away.
          There he was — dusty bandages aflutter — throwing 50-pound bales of hay from the ground to a horse-drawn wagon piloted by his daughter. 
          They filled the wagon six times that evening.
          That, my friend, is tough.