Okay, so I know how to own a small boy - I’ve read the manual (in fact, I’ve written some of it for your delectation), but hell, nobody told me about the blood and guts side of it. Take #2 (please!), living up to his nickname of ‘Death Wish Child’ yesterday and trying to kill himself again. I received the chilling ‘now there’s nothing to worry about, but…’ telephone call from the school. Again. This time, it seemed, another child had carelessly dropped a large rock on his head and they were on their way to the surgery with him, ‘but he’s conscious’. Oh, is that all? Not to worry then.
I drove to the school whilst on the phone to J, relating fears of brain damage and skull fractures (she’s very calm in a crisis - I tried to phone Hubby and me Mum too but he didn’t answer and she was at a funeral - arrggghhh). Anyhoo, when I got to the school a very subdued #2 was back from the surgery, having received the all-clear on a lump that bowed out half his forehead in the most alarming manner and was a grisly shade of eau-de-nil, and several cuts under his hair, one large enough to have drenched his collar, sleeve and half the front of his shirt in blood. Not a sight a mother needs to see too often.
Still, he’s in one piece and lovely #1, usually a wobbly jelly in a crisis, had been fantastic, helping his little brother into the shower to wash off a large proportion of the frighteningly huge amount of blood, and holding his hand at the Doctor’s.
And how did this all happen? They were climbing up a slope, and the girl who was climbing above him stood on the rock, dislodging it whereupon it bounced down and glanced off #2’s head on its way. ‘Girls’, said #2 disparagingly. ‘They’re nothing but trouble’. Hmmm.
June 21st, 2007 at 12:13 pm