Well, an incident this summer has changed my perspective. Perhaps my kids inherited their melodrama from me...
I had my knives sharpened one week this summer and the very next week, I was cutting a bagel. The knife slipped, and I thought it took off the entire end of my finger. I saw a dangling chunk of flesh.
I grabbed some paper towels and wrapped it quickly. My finger pulsed, and I kept looking for red soaking through white. As I stood in the kitchen clutching my finger, Gavin, my seven-year-old, came downstairs.
"Good morning, Mommy."
"Gav, I just cut my finger."
"Are you okay?"
"No."
Next thing, I saw our babysitter walk in with her normal, cheery, "Hey, how's it going?"
"Not well -- I cut my finger..."
Then BOOM! I fainted. Fell back and slammed my head on the kitchen floor.
I immediately came to and said, "I can't believe I fainted." Angelica, our sitter, got me into a chair and gave me an icepack for my head. Running through my mind was: Damn, my head hurts. Do I have a concussion? Shoot, will I have to miss my Poetry class today? Ouch, why does my head hurt so badly?
After ten minutes of icing it, I took away the pack and saw it was covered with blood. Angelica looked at my head and said, "Uh-oh, you need stitches."
Fast forward to the Emergency Room.
"Let me see that finger first. Hmm.... A small cut...Nothing we can do about it except for a little bacitracin and a band-aid. Now let's see your head.... Oh yeah.... you're going to need some staples. That's a nice cut you've got there...."
So, eight staples all because I imagined that I had chopped the tip of my finger off! My knees actually still get woozy thinking about it.
I am working really hard on showing more sympathy toward my injured family.
Be glad I am your teacher, not your doctor.
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| They look like real staples you use on paper! Notice the small band-aid on my left index finger. |
This is a good story to tell (after the fact). I feel like I can relate to it even though I am not a mother. But being a kid/teenager myself I know what you mean by being "over the top dramatic." I like to think of it as a "sympathy" card meaning the child will receive the attention they are craving from their parents if something is wrong with them. I like how you pointed out that something you thought was very serious that actually wasn't led to a more serious issue. I find it funny that in the picture you can see the tiny bandaid (the original problem) holding back the hair to the staples (the serious problem). I also feel for your babysitter because I babysit myself and usually when I walk into a house I expect to see kids watching TV, not a mother holding her finger then fainting.
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