By: Cheryl Maguire
A new parenting magazine arrived in my mailbox. This magazine always featured a story about how a mom magically developed a clever idea and solved the family problem. Every time I read it, I thought to myself, “I wish I could be a super mom like her.” One day I had an idea.
Every night before I tucked each child into bed we had, “talk time,” which consisted of reviewing the best and worst of the day. Often the same responses were uttered each night.
“What was the best part of your day?”
“Everything!”
“What was the worst part of your day?”
“Nothing.”
Even though I am glad that my children led such happy lives, these answers were uninformative and uninteresting. My solution to this conundrum was to create a new question, “What was the funniest part of your day?”
I hoped at the very least I would find some new material to write about. And just in case there was something interesting, I planned to record their responses every day for a year, maybe even write a book. I was really getting into it.
The first few days went better than expected. My daughter said, “On the bus I said to my friend, ‘knock, knock, who’s there, and then again I said knock, knock who’s there and then again I said knock, knock, who’s there, and then again’. . .”
I asked, “Did your friend laugh?”
Before she could respond my husband followed up with, “Did your friend move his seat?”
We all laughed at that question.
The day my kids got flu shots provided a plethora of material.
My son said, “When I didn’t want to get the shot and I asked, ‘when are you going to give it to me?’ And she already did!”
At least I didn’t have to run in a full sprint around the doctor’s office to catch him again. Now that he is older, he would’ve outrun me.
My daughter’s funniest moment involved a bowling birthday party she attended. When I asked her if she washed her hands, with a mouth full of food, which had been filled by said hands, she responded, “No, I forgot. Good thing I got my flu shot before the party”.
Yes, it is a good thing, but unfortunately that only covers the flu and not the millions of other germs your hand just transferred to your mouth. And it doesn’t work instantaneously either.
My other daughter’s funniest moment involved a detailed drawing which she proudly showed the nurse before she received her flu shot. On her first picture she wrote, “This is what I want to happen.”
It depicted a drawing of a smiling girl holding a needle with an arm extended and a band-aide on it. She does realize she is not giving the shot to herself, right?
On her next picture she wrote, “This is what I don’t want to happen.”
She drew a picture of a girl lying on the floor, tongue out and in the place of eyes were two letter X’s, and a needle lying on the floor next to her. The picture looked eerily like a drug overdose and made me wonder about her television viewing habits. The nurse smiled awkwardly as she viewed the drawings. She probably considered calling social services.
After the flu shot day, the funniest moments turned to bathroom humor which I almost never find funny. They discussed how a balloon letting air out sounded like a fart. Or Fart + Fart = smelly. Even though this does appear to be an accurate mathematical equation, I prefer the use of numbers. Or demonstrations about blowing on their elbow to making farting noises. All I could think of was, “How am I going to write about this in a parenting magazine? This is not like the other stories they publish.”
After a few weeks of the bathroom humor, they ended up saying, “I forget, or I don’t remember.”
While I was hoping for a book deal, that no longer seemed possible. And as for becoming one of the “super moms” in the magazine, I guess I won’t be submitting my story to that publication anytime soon. Maybe it’s time to cancel that subscription anyway.
Community Voices for Health 