In Stitches- No Foolin'

Every April Fool's Day, Russ gets me. I have been a sucker to his pranks for 15 years now. This year I was ready. I was just waiting for the call to come in. Then it did...

Garrett had a school field trip that day to our new ice skating rink here in St. George. I had been teasing him all morning because he was wearing shorts. I told him he was going to be laying on the ice more than skating and that he should consider wearing pants. He of course didn't pay any attention to me, because the boy refuses to wear pants (except to church on Sunday). I sent him off to school with his sack lunch for their picnic after skating, I took Grant and Gracie to school, then I was off to work.

It was about 10:30 in the morning when our phone rang. It was Russ. I was ready...

Russ: Hi Hon. I just got a call from Tonaquint Intermediate School. Garrett fell ice skating and needs a couple of stitches in his chin.
Me: (Not believing a word of this) Um, okay... sure.
Russ: We need to go and get him and take him to the hospital.
Me: Uh-huh. (acting bored by his game)
Russ: I can leave work right now and get him. Would it be better for me to take him to Insta Care or the emergency room?
Me: Uh-huh (still acting somewhat bored, but beginning to wonder).

Finally, I catch on that Russ is not joking. Garrett had really fallen, hit the ice with his chin, and split it open. We decided I should go and get him. I called our pediatrician to see if he could stitch him up. They said the P.A. was available and could get him right in. I picked Garrett up and could see the questioning look in his teacher's eyes- wondering how this parent was going to react. I started to laugh as he approached my car and said, "Of course it would be my child that has the accident". I was trying to let the teacher know we were okay with what had happened and that we weren't going to sue the school. Well, Garrett thought I was making fun of him and got pretty upset. He had been so embarrassed because all of his classmates were gathered around him as the management questioned him about the accident. He was mortified! I got him settled down and to the doctor's office.

The doctor took off the small butterfly bandage that they had put on him at the rink and put some numbing gel on the cut. After the gel had been on for about 15 minutes, Garrett still had quite a bit of feeling in his chin so the P.A. decided to shoot him up with some Lidocain. As he was injecting it into the cut, Garrett's chin split wide open. The P.A. said, "Oh, this is a lot worse than I thought". Garrett ended up with 9 stitches. Two deep stitches that will dissolve and 7 on the outside that he gets out on Tuesday.

As the P.A. finished (I watched the whole thing by the way... pretty cool) he told the nurse to put a bandaid over the stitches. She told Garrett that she only had glitter bandaids or crayon bandaids. Garrett shrugged and said he would take a crayon bandaid. He was very quiet as we finished up. As soon as we walked out of the door of the doctor's office, Garrett's eyes filled up with tears again. He looked at me and said, "SERIOUSLY, A CRAYON BANDAID?"!!! He was already so embarrassed and that just added insult to injury. Being the good mom that I am, I took him downstairs to my office and put a normal bandaid on him, took him to Honolulu Grill for lunch, and didn't make him go back to school. He said it turned out to be a good day.