Yeah, I must have too much time on my hands to be posting a THIRD post for the day! But this is way too funny to pass up. Even the kids said I had to make sure to write it down. So here it is. I am sure Flannery will think this is really funny when she has her own kids, but I don't think she was laughing today!
Ok, so we are eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs. Flannery picks up a large chunk and say, 'Hey, Mom, look at this. I can swallow this whole without chewing it first!'. I tell her not to do it as she could choke. But no sooner than I say that she pops it in her mouth and swallows. "See, she says, I did it." Ugh! Didn't she just lose a tooth last week because she didn't listen to me. Ugh! So Moira chimes in and says, "Mom, you should tell her about the flap in your throat." I'm racking my mind to figure out what she is talking about. She says, ' You know, like at the doctors." Oh, yeah, now it's coming back to me. Moira and I were at the doctors this past Monday (she had her eardrum rupture as well!) and I was giving her a little lesson on anatomy. There was a poster in the room with pictures of your sinuses, inside of the ear, and your throat. I explained to her the workings of swallowing at breathing.
So I go on to explain this all to Flannery, without the aid of a poster. I thought I explained it pretty well. I even thought, hey, there's science for the day :-) So I start eating again, and within the next minute my mind is off to other things that need to be done that day. It has been a very long week, and we still have a few more days left with lots of things on our calender. But I did notice that Flannery wasn't eating....just kind of staring. Then she says that she has been having a hard time breathing. Ok, nothing new with that as she, Moira and I have all been having a hard time with our allergies. Between drinking too much milk, and having our dogs inside it was a 'given'. So I say, "That's because of your allergies." I mean that sounds pretty straight forward to me. But she says it again....I tell her again it is her allergies and if it is bothering her that I can give her some allergy meds. I can tell it is bothering her, not physically, but mentally she is tormented about something. So she holds her chest and with tears in her eyes says she is having a hard time breathing and that it is concerning her. She literally used those words. Ok, at that I start laughing. I know I am a bad Mommy! But I was not making any connection to this conversation and the one that just took place a few minutes ago. I'm just thinking, ok, this has got to be GOOD! So I ask her what she thinks is wrong with her. She starts sobbing, saying, "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!" ok, now I am laughing so hard I am crying! Bad Mommy, bad mommy! I really could not help it! I'm thinking, WHAT on earth is she thinking! So I managed to blurt out, "You are not going to die, why do you think you are dying?!" And she sobs...."Because I swallowed the egg!!!" Ok, I almost fell out of my chair! I hug her and tell her that she must not have understood what I was saying. Choking is immediate, you would KNOW when you are choking because you can't breathe at ALL! She was thinking that this is something that could take time, and it could happen at any moment now that she swallowed the 'too big piece of egg'. I gave her some allergy med for good measure to make her feel better.
I have to say every single time I think about this exchange I break out laughing to the point of crying! I felt so bad for her, that she was really and truly freaked out. At the same time it was just so completely funny how I thought I was crystal clear and she totally misinterpreted what I said! Ok, it's really time for me to go to bed. I just had to make sure that this didn't get put aside until I forgot!
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