Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa SICK!!!!!
(T)he beloved of the
Lord
shall dwell in safety
by him;
and the Lord shall
cover him all the day long,
and he shall dwell
between his shoulders.
— Deuteronomy 33:12b
Our family has a keen regard for
gross-outs. We have extensive vocabularies regarding them, code words and
expressions to signify the magnitude and degree of disgust. It's our hobby.
It's what we do.
Daughter Eden and her best-friend-who's-a-boy,
Chris, developed the current epithet of choice. One day, they saw something
gross. One of them said, simply, "Sick!"
Next time, they embellished it,
making it more emphatic: "Whoa! Sick!"
Now, they elaborately bend over at a
90-degree angle, and slowly straighten up, waving their hands in front of them,
highly repulsed, exclaiming loudly:
"Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa SICK!!!!!"
If they'd only put half that much energy
into schoolwork and chores . . . but I digress.
Maddy pets her fellow
kid at the zoo last week, no worse for wear.
Here's why you need to know this: the
other day, Maddy, 7, came roaring into the room in hysterics, a sodden Kleenex
in her hand.
"Mommy! Oh, Mommy! I got a piece of
pipe cleaner stuck up my nose!"
Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa SICK!!!!!
They don't pay me enough for this job. They just don't. "How on EARTH.
. . ."
"I just wanted to see how far it
would shoot out!" She demonstrated a mighty snort -- believe me, with no
prompting. "But now it's stuck up there and I can't get it out!"
You see, Maddy makes animals out of
pipe-cleaner parts. For body details, she has to cut pieces real small. At the
moment, she had a pig's ears up her nose. It was a situation.
I imagined choking, suffocating,
intestinal punctures, open-nose surgery, or a metal spike piercing her skull. Or
worse, having to take her to Midwest Minor Medical, pushing dinner back to 10
p.m. while the food in the oven dried out like asphalt tiles.
I wasn't that scared, though. I was
prayed up over this child. God, You promised to take care of her, remember? Like
a lamb on the Shepherd's shoulders, right? You wouldn't take her from us over a
disobedience involving . . . snorting?!?
Remain calm, I told myself. Estimated
length: a half-inch. I peered up the tiny, trembling nostril. Nothing. I got my
tweezers and gently explored, tugging at what I thought was a pig's ear, but
turned out to be a 7-year-old nostril hair. That didn't set too well with the
sticker-upper.
"OWWWWWWW!!!!!"
More tears.
Then the Father Figure came home. Ever
notice how dads freak out in situations like this? Forget finesse and tenderness.
Bring on the technology! And lots of shouting and grunts! We practically had
the boat floodlight and a pair of ice tongs rooting around up there, with no
luck.
Midwest Minor Medical, it was.
Dinner à la asphalt? Oh, well.
It was embarrassing to walk in amid
REALLY sick and hurt people, and tell what happened. I think they were fax'ing
the FBI and Geraldo about these horribly neglectful parents.
Maddy has a way of making things
right, though. The nurse asked what color the pipe cleaner fragment was.
"Pink," Maddy replied, in solemn
nasal Munchkin voice.
After a brief pause, she added:
"But I DON'T think it's pink
any MORE!"
Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa SICK!!!!!
We all laughed our heads off.
The doctor took just two tries with
a speculum, and extracted it, to the great relief of all.
Then the truth came out. It seems
EVERYBODY does this, at some point. In fact, when the DOCTOR was about her age,
HE stuck a MARBLE up HIS nose . . . and then ruined the doctor's cashmere
suitjacket by getting you-know-what all over it.
Not only THAT, but the E.R. recently
had a similar patient, also with a happy ending. She was 9-going-on-16. She
wanted a nose piercing. Mama would have none of it.
So as soon as she left the house,
the kid shoved a magnet up inside her nose, and put a metal stud on the
outside. Voila!
She put another magnet and stud on
the OTHER side. But disaster struck: both magnets crept up toward her eyes,
magnetized. They finally got them out, but it took some doing.
All together now:
Whoa-oa-oa-oa-oa SICK!!! †
