Standoffs, amputation, car crash put winning and losing in perspective

Last Saturday was bittersweet for my family. That’s because one of our football teams won and one of them lost.

That’s because they played each other.

As you probably know, my alma mater, Vanderbilt, was a two-touchdown underdog to the University of Georgia, the current home of my two oldest children.

I attended the game with my father, a UGA alumni, and we sat high above the field on a beautiful fall day and watched the Commodores get dominated statistically but somehow win by one point.

That doesn’t happen often (the losing, not the statistical domination), and I must say I enjoyed it. As I filed out of Sanford Stadium with about 90,000 or so red-clad fans, I noticed how quiet everybody was.

Finally I heard a sound. I was getting a text message. It was from my son, who at that moment was sitting somewhere in the stunned student section.

“When Candy doesn’t make mistakes, they are good,” he wrote.

Did my own flesh and blood really just refer to Vanderbilt as Candy?

Ping! “Vandy,” he texted back.

Was it an honest mistake? Or had he meant to diss his old man before remembering who pays for his dorm and meal plan?

Either way, my spirits weren’t dampened a bit.

On the way home, I saw this headline on the L-E website: “No one is laughing at Georgia’s ‘comedy of errors.’”

I was laughing. In fact, I was already anticipating my next week at work, in which I planned to do some rare trash-talking.

But then a not-so-funny thing happened.

Actually, a whole bunch of not-so-funny things happened.

Before I got home from Athens, someone called from the newsroom to tell me a man had jumped to his death from the Oglethorpe Bridge.

A few hours later, officers were called to one of the Lee Roads in Smiths Station, where a man had shot and killed his wife. After a 4-hour standoff, he was killed after refusing to drop his weapon.

Meanwhile, another man on another Lee Road was shot and killed, allegedly during an argument with his brother-in-law.

Then early Sunday morning, a teacher returning from a party with friends to celebrate her upcoming wedding was killed on I-185 in Columbus when a car crossed the median and hit the vehicle in which she was a passenger.

Early Monday morning, a cab driver was killed in a trailer park. Later that day, a man near Britt David Park fired on four men who were robbing his home.

The next day, a local seventh-grader had his leg amputated in Atlanta and a man drowned in Phenix City when his dump truck slid into a pond.

On Thursday, a pedestrian was killed by a motorist. And we learned that the man killed this summer near a north Columbus swimming pool had allegedly been the victim of an execution style robbery involving $40,000.

Then Friday, a burglar broke into a Hilton Avenue mansion, allegedly wounding a police officer and forcing a police standoff.

In all, it’s been the kind of week that puts things into perspective and makes you forget for a moment about winning and losing.

The kind of week when you just want to go home and hug the people you love.

Regardless of which team they root for.

This story was originally published October 21, 2016 at 7:57 PM with the headline "Standoffs, amputation, car crash put winning and losing in perspective."