it will be a miracle...

A few years ago, there was a plastic commercial highlighting a boy’s struggle through childhood.  The mother’s mantra through the chronology of her child’s “adventures” was “it will be a miracle if he makes it (insert age here.)”  According to the commercial, it was through the miracle of plastic that her son survived bumps, bruises, cuts, scrapes, broken bones, dropped dishes, imaginary friends, extraordinary battles, and from what I gather, a generic existence as a BOY.  At the time, we giggled at the commercial, citing it for it’s marketing genius.  Little did we know, we would soon be able to write the script.

My youngest son, age six, has a knack for the unlikely.  While his first year was fairly uneventful, he hit the ground running at fifteen months with a harsh case of E. Coli poisoning, and a three-week stay at Children’s Medical Center—a stressful and traumatic time for all of us, and one that caused him to find his thumb and begin the dreaded thumb-sucking. That hospital stay gave him what we began to know as “white coat syndrome,” and for about a year and half after the fact, any doctor, dentist, or look-alike with a white coat ignited a full blown terror in my seemingly normal, sweet toddler.  Also that summer, he fell walking (just walking, not running or battling) and knocked out a tooth—a tooth that still has not been properly replaced by a “big boy tooth.”  At age two, he fell from a two inch drop out of a toy car and broke his left arm.  I begged the doctor to go ahead and cast the thumb, and effectively heal the arm and stop the sucking, but apparently that’s not an accepted practice.  Around age three, he hypothesized that by JUMPING ON A BASKETBALL, he would conceivably jump super high.  After a hard hit by his head to the ground, he proved that hypothesis wrong.  He’s experimented on his face with household cleaners.  I’m sure he’s eaten inedible items in the backyard.  In kindergarten, he pounded two weights together during PE, and broke his finger—we didn’t go to the doctor for that one, given all the experience up to this point. We knew a broken bone when we saw one.  We also knew the course of action—splinted, bandaged, and moved on.  Twice this year he has come to my classroom impaled by toothpick-sized pieces of mulch—one sticking out of his hand like a small tree, and the other cutting through the entire length of his palm.  The kicker with that second thorn was that he acquired it during COMPUTER class.  Yes, only my child would need a thorn extraction after keyboarding practice.

You might wonder why so many ill-fated incidences seem to plague the youngest of the Scroggins Clan.  Could it be all my parenting skills have been used up on the first two children?  That seems harsh (on my account).  Could it be that in the last six years we have put ourselves in dangerous situations, and need to have a class in self-preservation?  That seems a dash dramatic.  No, my theory is that our move to Decatur actually increased our everyday safety factor.  However, I do have a hypothesis of my own.

It’s genetic.

While I have not admitted this to many of my friends, I too was an accident prone youngster.  It began with twelve stitches on the back of my head in kindergarten, and from there spiraled to sprained ankles, broken fingers, a sprained wrist, a broken ankle, more stitches, broken toes, and culminated with a car accident that left me with broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade, broken teeth… the works.  I actually owned my own crutches, and had a drawer in the bathroom dedicated to ace bandages, sterile wraps, and butterfly bandaids.  Actually, that car accident didn’t seal the deal to my accidental fate—in fact, my senior year in high school, my classmates presented me with a football helmet at a pep rally after I walked face first into a door.

Yes, face first.

So, when you see my child bleeding, bruised or in general distressed, and I’m not running immediately to his side, don’t panic. It’s not that I’m complacent, it’s just that I’ve been there before—this whole injury thing is old hat, and apparently he’s genetically predisposed. We keep the first aid products in business, and keep our doctors on their toes. We know how to bandage most any injury, and we also know our way around an emergency room. I’ll give him one thing. He’s definitely not boring, and at this rate, it will be a miracle if he makes it to seven—plastics or no plastics.