To the Nurse's Office!

Caitlin decided to perform a Sit In at the school nurse's office today.

She went to the office for a pair of horrible and gruesome maladies: a small cut on her hand from a pencil and being accidentally punched by a boy practicing martial arts in the hallway.

I know! Can you believe it? I know that my heart skipped a beat to think of poooooor Caitlin, sitting there, absolutely gushing blood from the wound in her hand and gripping broken ribs from a poorly aimed blow. I'm certain it would have broken my heart to envision the sadness that was Caitlin, holed up in the nurse's office, refusing to return to class.

Except that I didn't receive the call. Eric did.

The nurse called him because she absolutely refused to return to class. It was what we might as well refer to as a High Needs Day (High Needs Days: not just for nursing infants any more!) The nurse, not able? willing? to put her foot down and get Caitlin to return to the classroom, called Eric to come and deal with her. He went up to the school, informed Caitlin that she couldn't go home and applied a Grumpectomy: flipping her upside-down and shaking the grumps out, plus a little high speed spinning-in-a-circle. Cheered, she was ready to return to class, but not before the warning that this wouldn't work again.

You can see how getting a Grumpectomy in the middle of a bad day could become habit forming. Daddy as a controlled substance. Use sparingly.

After school we had the discussion about how the nurse's office is neither a spa nor a place to hole up when the rigors of first grade get one down. Then we gave her the rah-rah speech about making friends. Again.

All I could think of was that back in my day, you would have to have been spewing bodily fluids at a prodigious rate to hang out in the nurse's office.

Pencil wounds? Accidental punches?! Psshaw!

We used to play Belt Tag: a game involving whipping one another across the playground with belts. I ask you this: What the hell we were thinking?!

Me? I don't know. We were in elementary school in New York. It made sense at the time and at least we weren't having rock fights on the playground.

We saved those for after school.