I Need An Exorcism!
When your phone rings at 7:43 a.m., you know it’s going to be a bad day.
It started with a phone call from the middle school nurse. “Hi, this is the nurse. Your daughter was injured during a bus evacuation. Would you like to speak with her?”
Okay, so I’m slightly groggy, but if you use the words bus evacuation and injury, do you really think I DON’T want to speak with her? What the heck? Of course I want to speak with her! She gets on the phone and informs me it was a drill (whew) but that she hurt her ankle and she’ll call me if it gets worse.
Being the Princess, I know it’s going to get worse. It always does. This child has a raincloud over her head. Any injury that can possibly happen, happens to her. She drinks at least a gallon of milk a week and still, every bone that can break, does. No, this is not the time to play the one-up game and ask if we’ve had X illness or Y injury. Don’t tell me about them. I don’t want to know about them, and I certainly don’t want to take the chance of jinxing anything and having them happen to her. Just trust me, we get them all!
At 9:00 a.m., I get the follow-up phone call. I go to school, pick her up, call the orthopedist (whose number I should have memorized, or at least on speed dial) and take her to their office. We arrive and they all greet me with giggles of glee.
“Oh, it’s you again! Nice to see you. What, you couldn’t stay away? Did you miss us?” You see, we were just there three weeks ago; not for a broken bone, but still. I smile and follow them to the examining room. It feels like home.
The doctor walks in and actually offers me a wall in our name in his office. Seriously. I’m not sure if it’s a Wall of Distinction or a Wall of Shame. I’m not sure I want to know. My husband isn’t sure why he’s not offering us a frequent patient discount.
X-rays, exam, boot and crutches later (Wouldn’t you know that she grew since the last time we needed these things and doesn’t fit the ones I already have at home—the boot and crutches, not the x-ray machine. I don’t have one of those. Yet.) we leave the office and I drive her home, giving her the rest of the day off—I’m not sure if I’m doing it to be nice or if I’m afraid of her doing something else to herself.
She’s starting to look bionic to me—she’s got so much hardware/braces on her, there’s very little actual flesh showing these days. Although we were both encouraged that she didn’t look like the other girl we saw leaving the office, with two boots! But I digress…
I drop her off at home and go on the errand I had originally intended to make today: taking the lawn mower in to be fixed…again! Somehow, despite being tuned up before the season started, something came back broken. And since my husband is so busy at work he barely has time to breathe, let alone do anything else, I told him I’d do it for him.
So I go to the lawn mower place. They unload it from my car, tell me they’ll be done in a minute, then come back out and tell me it will take longer so I should go and they’ll call me when it’s ready. I get into my car and back into a telephone pole. Actually, I banged into the hard plastic, bright orange bumper that surrounds the pole and that is supposed to warn everyone about the location of the pole. Everyone except me.
I move away from the pole, see that the pole is still standing, see that there are no remnants of my car on the ground and drive home, yelling words that I am supposedly too well bred to say (sorry, Mom!). I go home and call my husband, who has the good grace not to complain (or laugh). I call the insurance company guy, who does laugh when I explain about how I’m apparently the only person who doesn’t actually see the bright orange plastic warning bumper, but redeems himself by sympathizing with me when he hears the Princess making fun of me (apparently the obnoxious bone has survived intact).
The lawn mower place calls me to tell me the lawn mower is ready. I’m now too afraid to go back there to pick it up—sorry neighbors, our grass is going to have to grow a bit.
Now it’s time for Banana Girl to arrive home. She does and takes the Princess’ injuries in stride. She also doesn’t comment on the car. Her mood is greatly improved when I inform her that the old crutches are now hers and she can play with them. However, by the time we sit down for dinner, she’s complaining about how everything is now going to center around her sister and she will be ignored. I go to great lengths to explain how that’s not going to happen and that really, the Princess’ foot is only bruised, so really, while it’s inconvenient, it’s not going to cause the Earth to move off of its axis and start revolving around her. She starts to feel better.
At which point, Princess starts feeling around her mouth and informs me, for the first time ever, her brace wire has popped out. Banana Girl grimaces and my husband laughs (brave man).
If anyone knows of an exorcist, please send him or her my way.
