Last night, right before we got the kids down, I was wiping brownish colored water (sign that cooler is a piece of crap) off my swamp cooler thingie and was just about finished with said job that I had put off for some time, when my wife (what was she thinking!) allowed our six year old son to fall in the tub, splitting his chin wide open. I jumped off the stool and wife immediately--she was like so much better in the panic than me--said, "Let's go to Weecare." Shit, shit I thought, selfishly grasping at fading images of my nightly microwave popcorn and episode of Northern Exposure.
Six stitches and seven (one for not crying during the stitches) dum-dum suckers later and we were headed to Wendy's, a post-stitches tradition, where son ordered a vanilla Frosty:
"Hey, dad?"
"What son?"
"Hurting my chin wasn't too bad," he said grasping all seven dum-dum suckers in his left hand and taking a large bite of Frosty in the other. "And it's late, right? I get to stay up late, huh?"
Well, I'm off to split my chin on the tub.
8 comments:
Excellent post. Want to join in on the renga? I can see a split chin in meter.
To me, one true thing in this story is seeing the downtime that all parents of small children live for vanish into thin air at the cusp of the crisis. It turns out to be a badge for the kid, plus treats, plus stay-up-late privileges. But where are YOUR dum-dum suckers? I ask you.
Ah it reminds me of all the er visits we've taken....when Josh kicked the window and split his leg open, Noah falling out of bed and breaking his collar bone, Noah doing an aeral with a bad landing and a broken bone, Noah swallowing a marble...
I totally understand his reaction of getting to stay up late and getting a frosty. Owies often come with lots of attention and special exceptions, which they crave!
I didn't know you were a NE fanatic too!
I love NE! What a little lost treasure, certainly a show which was a precursor to much "cutting edge" stuff like Ali McBeal and other experimental stuff.
He sees the positive in the negative. Not "I split my chin open, I bled, I got painful stitches" but "I got suckers! And a frosty! And I got to stay up late! Hurray!"
I love it. I am cherishing these last moments before school starts, and my little boy becomes a big boy and disappears before my eyes.
Yeah, 1st grade is monumental it seems, a snip snip on those apron strings.
very funny. nice way to look at things.
i didn't watch NE when it aired way back when, but i discovered some syndicated episodes on pbs awhile back and liked them. what station is it on?
my in-laws bought the DVDs and loaned them to us so we have been watching one just about every night this summer. I've never caught a syndicated episode.
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