Monday, February 6

My Pirate

Saturday morning hubby and I were sitting in the living room, sipping coffee, reading the paper, soaking in tranquility. From the upstairs family room where the little kids were building a tent city, an unearthly screeching arose.

Assuming a scuffle had broken out over some prized bit of Okie-town real estate, hubby shook his head. "We need an eject button."

I was puzzled. "An eject button?"

"Yeah. Push eject and the screamer finds himself out in the yard."

I had to admit the idea had appeal. We sat, waiting for the inevitable tattler to come down the stairs, pouring out a woeful tale of abuse at the hand of siblings. But the screaming only continued, and the intensity was such that I began to wonder if something serious had happened.

(Sidenote here: If our response here seems unconcerned, even callous, please remember-- we have 8 (eight) kids. We do care, really. But if every howl brought us running, we'd be suffering from nervous breakdowns by noon every day.)

Finally, with the screaming showing no signs of abating, we summoned the howler (one of the 7 year olds) to us, only to find that he was truly injured, and that for once it had nothing to do with a sibling. It seems he'd stood up in his tent, and hit his eye full force on a protruding handle of the foozball table. Yowch.

Half an hour of ice, a look into his eye, and a brief internet search later, hubby was off to Quick Care with his still-sobbing son. He'd managed to scratch his cornea in two different spots, and came back from the doctor with a bandaged eye and a prescription for antibiotic eye drops.

To add insult to injury, this is THE most self-conscious child in the whole family. And not only were we going to church the next day, we were also going to a big Super Bowl party. The poor kid would probably have to explain the whole dumb thing sixteen gazillion times. He was a wreck just thinking about it. And jokes about pirates did nothing to ease his self-consciousness.

In Sunday School I ran interference when I dropped him off-- told the story to his whole class right at the start, so no one would need to ask about it again. By the time he got out of class, he was starting to feel a little better, though his hand kept going up to his eye during church.

He begged to take the patch off for the party, but the doc had said he needed it on two full days, so we told him he needed to tough it out. First thing out of the host's mouth when we walked into the party was a question about the eye. And a bunch more followed. Pretty soon the 7 year old withdrew to the corner to play checkers with a sibling and avoid the inevitable if kindly inquisition of the relatives.

But then a wonderful thing happened. My sister showed up with her kids. Amazingly, her teenager was sporting an enormous bandaid that covered most of his forehead. Within minutes of entering the house, he'd ripped off the bandaid to show our 7 year old an impressive row of stitches. The 7 year old's mouth hung open--and then his face relaxed and he played happily the rest of the day. Seems there's worse stuff than an eye patch. Still, he was delighted when this morning he was allowed to peel the thing off.

5 Comments:

At 12:57 PM, Blogger At A Hen's Pace said...

What a great story! The Lord does care about the little things, doesn't he?

 
At 1:02 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm praying for a quick recovery, (and i think your husband should start designing the Screamer Ejector mmediately!)

 
At 6:48 PM, Blogger B.E.C.K. said...

OUCH!! I'm cringing just thinking about it. I hope your poor little guy is all healed up very soon!

 
At 11:00 PM, Blogger Perri said...

You sound just like me. It is an entirely different scream that will actually get me to move from what I am doing to go check it out. and when you hear that scream, you know it really needs mom's attention.

 
At 7:44 AM, Blogger Pam said...

Great story. Found you through Queen Beth. I'll definitely be back.

 

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