I am now the mother of a pirate…or Nick Fury…we haven’t quite decided yet.
The new pirate child is the result of yet another adventurous night in the Flowers’ household and has also started me thinking we should just have our own room reserved at the E.R. We’ve had about four trips related to a food allergy we cannot seem to figure out…because my son is a freak of nature and is both allergic to everything and nothing at the same time and no amount of skin pricking has solved the mystery.
Then the elder minion decided one night that it was imperative that he learn how to be a King-Fu master and that the bathroom, right after his bath, was the optimum place to try this. What I witnessed of the event was the sound of a passionate ‘Hi-Yah!’ followed by a loud thud which was followed by even louder silence. I found the half-naked minion lying on the floor next to the toilet with glassy eyes clutching the back of his head. And then I saw the goose-egg, or more accurately, his attempt at growing a new head out of the back of his original noggin. The doctor’s reaction to my son telling the story was pretty priceless and I’m certain I heard him tell the nurses at the front desk that he had never been more grateful for being blessed with two girls. After three hours at the ER he was diagnosed with a minor concussion and the doc recommended we refrain from bathroom Kung-Fu.
And then the pirate night happened. A few days ago I was doing laundry when the elder minion decided to take hold of one of the Tide Pods and see how much it could be squeezed. The answer is not much. I looked up from sorting socks to the sound of him screaming that he was going to die and saw his face COVERED in milky white soap. Despite my super calm efforts to wash out his eyes (translate this to, I tossed him fully clothed into the shower and we both cried as I pinned him down and sprayed off his face) it seemed that the soap had some kind of magic clinging power and I was going to need more expert assistance to clean out his eyes.
When we arrived at the E.R., to my great shame, both the triage nurse and the doctor on call greeted my son and I by name. We’ve had the same man as our doctor the last four times we have visited the ER, Nicholas has now spent more time with this doctor than he has his grandparents in the last few months. I fully expected child services to be called, but instead I listened to the doctor and nurse rant for fifteen minutes about the evils of laundry pods. As it turns out Nick is in no way unique in having an accident with one of them, and I should maybe be thankful that he at least didn’t try to eat the damn thing.
It turned out the exploding pod had given his right eye a minor chemical burn so the doc gave us some antibiotics and an eye patch and sent us on home with a promise that he would be back to normal soon. And then the real fun started.
It took about two hours for the eye patch to go to the kid’s head. First the pirate jokes started.
“Mom…what is a pirate’s favorite letter?…Arrrrrrrr!!!”
“Why did the pirate refuse to say, “Aye, Aye, Captain”? Because he’s only got one eye.”
“What has 12 arms, 12 legs and 12 eyes? A dozen pirates.”
And on and on it went…
Then his Auntie Marlo came to visit and taught him to blame everything on the eye by pointing at it and exclaiming, “It be the eye!!!”
(Loud fart emanates from beneath the minion) Me: “Nicholas!! What do you say?!?!”
“It be the EYE!!!!”
All the veggies are left on his plate?
“It be the eye!!!”
And on and on it went…
Then we had to go to an eye specialist to get the funky eye double checked.
“Hey Mom…that nurse likes me…”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m a pirate…Nurses LOVE pirates!”
“All of them?”
“Well, maybe not all. But they all love the Avengers and I’m basically a small, pale Nick Fury…so either way I’m good.”
“For real kid?”
“Mom…It be the eye!!!”
You know what Tide? I kind of hate your right now. A week ago I had a normal geeky child, now I am the mother of a pirate who blames all of his bodily functions on an eye patch…awesome.
Raising Geek Kids 