The Rocks Story Part I

Sometimes, when my son Jonah is on a role telling me a story like about the kid that nevah combs his hair or bwushes his teeth and hits people and tells LIES and then one day he stwangled a kitten with his own two hands in fwont of EVWYBODY!!, he starts to get sooo exasperated that the wordsstartorunintoeachother and spit collects at the corners of his mouth and he forgets to even breathe. I’ve tried to post about the last two weeks of my life, but every time I think I have something halfway publishable, I reread it and realize that I sound exactly like Jonah would sound after having sparred with the Incredible Hulk… on his birthday… while on his way to the moon…. to save a kitty.

So now that I realize this, I’m going to try one last time to tell you a story about that time I got rocks for Mother’s Day. Or large pebbles, as it were.

First, do you remember that girl I last wrote about? The one that was so very wise in her handling of a certain invitation addressed to Maria? As it turns out, her wisdom runs dry when it comes to “What to do with muddy soccer shoes.” Bless her heart. Toni thought she’d do me a favor and take off those muddy soccer shoes of hers before walking into my house the week before last. And since I gave her such praise for taking care in protecting my dirty-enough carpet, she decided to go one step further and clean those shoes in my kitchen sink, thereby giving me the coveted gift of mud, large pebbles and dirt splattered everywhere. It was her way of saying, “See, now that I spared you the agony of cleaning mud from the carpet, I thought you could busy yourself for a few days by trying to get the garbage disposal to unleash those large pebbles from its ferocious jaws and quit humming so annoyingly every time I flip this here switch.” Indeed.

A few days later, I was to board a plane and fly to California. Those few days were supposed to be spent washing laundry, emptying out the refrigerator, packing, doting over my wise, wise children. But it wasn’t meant to be. No siree. There were no wise children to be found. Friday, May 11^th came and Jonah discovered that, by chance, he found a rock in his ear.

“Mom,” he said, “Is theuh something in my eauh?”

I looked. “I don’t see anything, son.”

“Look again,” he said. “I’m pwetty shuh there’s a wock in theuh.”

I got a flashlight and shined it into his ear. Sure enough. A rock. A LARGE pebble. I tried to scratch at it with my finger. I may as well have been using a sausage link. That rock laughed at my finger. I grabbed for a bobby pin and realized I would probably make things worse if I attempted to finagle a rock rescue mission with a pointy instrument. So I called my dad who suggested soapy water and a nose aspirator, you know, to FLUSH it out. It only made the rock shiny and fragrant. The rock was stuck, but good. So… much to the chagrin of Antonia, we forewent dinner and went to the emergency room, the three of us because Allan and the babies were out of town and therefore couldn’t partake in this pebble drama.

We only waited in the waiting room for an hour and a half, which I thought was not bad for a Friday night and a rock-in-the-ear kind of emergency. When we finally got back there, the pressing questions immediately started. So many people. So many questions.

“How’d ya get that in there, little buddy?”

“Are you ever gonna do THAT again??”

“Haven’t you ever heard that rocks don’t go in ears?”

My son deserves a couple of medals. One, for The Most Nonchalant Way of Telling Your Mother You Need To Go To The Emergency Room. And two, for Patience. YES, it was very NOT SMART to have stuck a rock in his ear, but I wouldn’t have been able to not shout, after the thirtieth time asked, “You know, I have absolutely no memory how a rock ended up in my ear! I was hoping you’d shed some light on the matter.” Or “Why yes! Yes, OF COURSE, I’m going to do this again! Because lord knows I LOOOVE skipping dinner to hang out in an overcrowded, stinky hospital waiting room for a few hours just for the opportunity to hang with you, my witty witty peeps.” OR… “Really?!?! I NEVER knew rocks didn’t belong in ears. Do me a favor and call social services. This woman should be locked up for having the audacity to never give her only son that priceless piece of information.”

In all honesty, we live in a relatively small town. And I know that entertainment is hard to come by. But come on. I’d swear that people were coming down from the ICU just to check out the kid with the rock in his ear. So many people. So many questions. I should be grateful, really. Because the questions and the people weren’t anywhere near as bad as the rock extraction process. Before I knew it, they were putting a numbing solution into his ear and stabbing in there with sharp instruments. Incidentally, the numbing solution did nothing but give him a false sense of security for a brief three seconds or so. Soon he was clawing at their arms and begging me to make them stop. “Almost there!” the doctor kept saying. “Almost there!” And so, against my better judgment, I let it the extracting process continue. I’m sure it was minutes, but it felt like hours later, they decided to sedate him. By this point, he was so traumatized that it took three EMTs to hold him down just to get him hooked up to an IV. They promised me he wouldn’t remember anything in the morning, that the rock would be easier to extract if he wasn’t bursting the blood vessels in his neck and face from all that screaming. And so I sat back and watched as they went at it again. Now that my son had fallen under the influence of drugs, I expected him to lie still, like all patients do in movie operations. But he sleepily batted at them when they probed with their hooks. He moaned loudly. He curled his knees up and tried to turn. He was feeling it!

“I can feel it!” I said. “I mean, HE can feel it!!”

“Yes, but he won’t remember,” they reminded me.

I felt like I was betraying my son by standing by and watching. Was this right? And what was I supposed to do about it? Just as I was about to tell them to stop already, the doctor wiped beads of sweat from his brow and told me he couldn’t get it.

Take a breather...