It’s all fun and games until…

Growing up we all heard that phrase from our mothers and usually it ended with ‘until someone loses an eye.’  Run with scissors, “It’s all fun and games until you fall and stab yourself.”  Run with a pencil in your hand, “It’s all fun and games until you fall and poke yourself.”  I don’t know about anyone else but whenever it was said to me I never pictured the worst case scenario.  If I ran with scissors and that was yelled out to me I always had visions of a scrape on the leg.  If it was a pencil and I fell there would be a huge pencil mark on my leg. Never was a rolling around on the floor in pain as my lifeblood spewed from my body.  So, when I had kids I decided to step it up a notch.

It all started innocently enough with the whole look both ways before crossing the street rule.  It seemed like no matter how many times I stopped and looked both ways my kid would still try and dart across.  Every one says how teenagers feel like they are immortal and that’s why they do such stupid things.  Toddlers have no concept of death so they do really stupid things.  That’s when I went that extra step with the all fun and games rule.  I had to keep it simple so it would be something that stuck in his/their mind.  So, I said, “You have to look both ways or a car could come and ::clap my hands together and smoosh them around:: It will squish you flat like a pancake.”  Little eyes opened wide, his cute little mouth formed an ‘o’, he looked between my face and my hands and I saw him make the connection.  This was repeated a couple more times and yet again when my youngest came to be.  Which led to many amusing encounters while we were out and about.  It started with roadkill that we passed in the car and my child yelling from the backseat, “Flat ::clap squish hands together:: like a pancake.”  I’d simply nod and tell him that raccon should have indeed looked both ways before crossing.  This led to random encounters with strangers in parking lots.  We would be at the mall and stop to look both ways before crossing from the parking to the sidewalk and my kids would watch people just walk right on across without looking.  This seemed to trouble them and they would yell, “STOP! Flat..::chubby little hands clapped and smooshed around:: like a pancake!”.  Their little speech would earn me startled looks and I’d just shrug and give the “kids, what are you gonna do.” look to them.

I covered the running with scissors with, “It’s all fun and games until you fall and stab yourself in the heart and die.” or “It’s all fun and games until you turn the corner, run into your brother, stab him in the heart and kill him.”  I used the same variation with running around with a pencil gripped in their hands.  I used it when hotwheel tracks were suddenly swords and managed to escape that with only a scratch on a cornea that healed.  (Apparently, Hotwheel track usage as swords can cause someone to really lose an eye) What I never thought to cover was Frisbee usage.  You heard me, Frisbee usage.  Silly me figured that at my kids ages, which is now almost 14 and almost 12, they would know the difference between inside and outside toys.  Apparently not.

So, parents, this is a tidbit for you.  A Frisbee thrown across a room that is 8 X 12 feet never has enough time to slow down so it will not cause damage.  A frisbee thrown in that space reaches a high enough velocity to complety knock out a tooth.  My youngest is living proof.  One lower front tooth, broken in half, right above the level of the root.  Which means that for his 16th birthday, while his schoolmates are getting cars, he gets a root canal.  Apparently, those can’t be done until the mouth has finished growing and all of his molars have come in.

Frisbee – 1

Youngest-0

Monkey Pox

I stand by a statement I made ages ago that kids are nothing but walking germ buckets.  You send them off to school and it starts.  First it’s a cold, then the flu, then strep throat, not even going to get into lice.  You send them off healthy and they come back sneezing and dripping snot.  No matter what you do you can’t avoid it.  It passes from one member of the family to another to another.  It’s a daisy chain of sickness with each person getting it worse than the last.  By the time the last person up comes down with it, they want to kill the original carrier of the disease.  Only they can’t do that because that person is all better now, and due to them being on their death bed, they are unable to run fast enough to catch them.

Now the school doesn’t give you any warning when illness is sweeping through it.  They’ll send a note home for lice but not if 15 out of 20 kids are out of your kids class with the flu.  You usually don’t find out until you either get a call from the school to come pick your suddenly ill child up or you call them in sick and are told about it.  And this is what happened to me this week.

A call from the school nurse on Tuesday that my youngest was running a low grade fever and complaining his throat hurt.  Really?  He never said anything to me.  Well, there is strep going around school.  Fuck, I think to myself.  Just FUCK.  I go and get him and he’s got a low fever, give him some advil for it, a glass of water and tell him to nap.  Peered in his mouth with a flashlight for those tell tail white dots on the back of the throat, kept him home from school on Wednesday and his fever broke early morning.  Figured he had a slight version of a cold his brother brought home the week before.  I sent him back to school Thursday.  He was there for less than an hour when my phone rang.  The nurse proceeded to ream my ass.  “He can’t be in school, he isn’t scabbed over yet!”  My mind scrambled wondering why he would need to be scabbed over and all I could say was, “Huh?”  “He has chicken pox!”  The fuck you say, my head said.  Luckily my mouth filtered it to something else, “He has what?”  “Chicken pox!  It’s been going around.  There were ten kids out yesterday with it.  He can’t be here until he’s scabbed over!”  “Ok…” I’m thinking she needs to calm down, it’s not like I sent him to school with Ebola and didn’t he get it there to begin with? “I’m on my way.”

Now, I know you are wondering how I missed chicken pox.  I’ll tell you how.  It’s easy really.  Reason one he’s had the vaccine less than five years ago.  Reason two, he is eleven years old, I don’t see him naked.  All his bumps are on his chest and his stomach.  He never complained about itching so I had no reason to strip him.  I had no reason to make him strip because the school never sent home a letter saying there was a chicken pox outbreak at school.  Unlike when they send home notes about lice and I go over his head with a magnifying glass.  Had they sent home a note, I would have made him strip off his shirt.  I would have asked him if he itched.  I would have dragged him under bright lights to check.  So, damn them for not telling me.

Here’s hoping I make it through the chicken pox without scratching myself silly due to the heebie jeebies of knowing he has it.  Also, here’s hoping I don’t get shingles, which I can apparently get since I have already had the chicken pox and it still resides in my body.  Fuck, I itch all over!