Tuesday's Child, He Ain't

The #1 son is off to Tennessee next week to his basketball camp. I am apprehensive. How will he survive on his own? Just today, at summer school, he came to me begging for snack machine money. "C'mon, Mom. Lunch is nasty." What were they serving? Hot ham and cheese sandwiches. That's one of our longest lines during regular school. But no. #1 would rather lunch on a Snickers bar and some Bugles and a Pepsi. I asked what he was going to eat at camp. "Everything. Whatever they serve. I'm sure THEY will have GOOD food." That boy needs a night class in pessimism.

Seriously, I'm worried about him. He is not...how you say...the most coordinated child on the team. I would drape him in bubble wrap if it was socially acceptable. No velvet for me, George Costanza! This morning, I popped into the gym to see what he was up to. He was rooted to the volleyball court. The one time he hit the ball, it came careening down the length of the gym and bounced two inches from the head of a varsity basketball player who was taking a break, flat on her back, unaware that the errant volleyball of death was approaching at warp speed. It bounced, she sat up, and her friend hollered, "What are you trying to do, kill her?" #1 looked accusingly at the kid next to him. "Why'd you do that?" he blamed.

Last night, #1 was eager to get some potato skins out of the oven. As he opened the oven door and bent over, I said, "Be careful, the heating element is..." At that moment, #1 screamed like a schoolgirl, jumped back, and declared, "I burnt myself!" Duh. I was trying to tell him that the heating element was at the top, right where his forearm was headed. Now he has a two-inch troughish hole on the top of his right forearm. Good thing he's left-handed. That thing has a deep valley. It looks like a cut that split open. I suppose he had a blister, but the top skin was incinerated. Thank the Gummi Mary there was no charring. Second-degree burns are good enough for the Hillbilly family. Today, it looked kind of yellowish at the bottom of the trough, though it was not oozy, but had a light scab. I patched him up with some of the Devil's triple-antibiotic ointment and a wide band-aid. He's good to go. Don't want anybody hassling him about spreading staph.

But that's not the end of the calamitous life of the #1 son. I was sorting laundry when he got out of the shower and tracked me down. "Is my eye bleeding?" He meant the skin between his eyebrow and his eyelid. Yes. Yes it was bleeding. Then he said, "Do you want to know how I did that?" Yes. Please enlighten me, you walking, talking, one-boy demolition zone. "I got out of the shower, and as I bent over to dry my feet, I whacked my head on the sink." In a more primitive time, I fear that my genes would not be passed on.

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.

Just for the record, the #1 son was born on a Monday. I guess that little scar won't be too obvious. No more than that scar under his lip from where his teeth went through it in a tragic kitchen-counter swinging incident.

We won't even start on The Pony, who made me swear not to tell anyone that he was born on a Sunday.