A Tiny Cot Shangri-La

So this week, the secretary at our school came to the cafeteria to let me know that Connor's school was on the phone. Of course, I freaked out a little because this was the first time they have contacted me and so I hurried into our office to pick up the call. The secretary from his school was really nice and let me know that Connor's teacher had brought him to the clinic because he had been really lethargic all day and just not himself. He wasn't running a fever or anything, he just didn't feel well.

Connor gets picked up from school everyday by my Memommy and then she brings him to my school, so I called her and asked if she could get him a little early because he was feeling bad. She said she would head right over and before we hung up she said, "Oh I was a little worried that he overdid it last night." Hmmm, that was a red flag. He had spent the night with my mom, his Mimi, the night before and she took him to school that morning so I hadn't seen him. I decided to call her and find out what exactly went on the night before and if he had been acting sick before she took him to school. After getting ahold of my mother and explaining about the call from school I asked how their evening went the night before in detail. Here is what they did: First, when Memommy picked him up from school they went to have banana splits. Then they went home and he had about three plates full of mac and cheese for dinner. After that, he helped my mom make a cake for someone at her work so he had lots of tastes of batter and icing. By then, he was nowhere near ready to go to bed (I have no idea why) so he went ahead and stayed up really late. In the morning, she had such a hard time waking him up that the only way she could get him out of bed was to bribe him with a trip to the donut shop. So by the time he made it to school he was pretty much cracked out on sugar. He was a four year old ticking time bomb and he didn't even make it to the morning prayer on the announcements before he crashed. After lunch (I imagine she packed his lunch box full of pixie sticks and sugar packets) his teacher decided to let him have a lie down in the school clinic. Frankly I am shocked the kid wasn't comatose.

Once Connor got to the clinic, a place he never knew existed, he had a grand time regaling the secretary with tales of all he had eaten and how late he had stayed up (I told her midnight, Mommy, or midnight twenty. I can't remember). Nowhere in this little speech did he mention that all these parental transgressions occurred when he was under the care of his grandmother, not his parents. So then I was forced to send my mother a tersely worded email about the situation. I felt the need to remind her since it's been so long since she was the parent of a preschooler that school nights are not generally when we run our household like it's rush week at Delta Tau Chi. We save that crap for the weekends. If she wants school night sleepovers there have to be some stricter guidlines or even guidlines period. I guess we should start with that.

Connor recovered by the time he got to my school that afternoon and was so excited to tell me all about this magical place called the clinic. He thought it was the coolest place he had ever seen because they had a tiny bed and jars with lots of bandaids in them. It didn't even cross his mind that he was outing his parents as frontrunners for "The World's Most Permissive Award". He just climbed up on that tiny cot and spilled his guts to "the doctor." After informing him that she was the school's accountant and not an actual doctor, I also told him that I hoped he had enjoyed his visit to the clinic because it had better be his last unless he is vomiting. And I mean actually vomiting, not just maybe feeling like it. I won't have any son of mine becoming a clinic groupie. I am already married to one and he knows it too.

Exhibit A: As I was sharing the story of Connor's first visit to the clinic, using my disapproving teacher voice, Matt got a wistful look in his eye and said, "Man, I used to go to the clinic all the time when I was in elementary school, I absolutely loved that place!" See what I mean? I let it slide that he downplayed his problem by saying elementary while I know from first hand experience that he also meant middle and high school. I know there is no prenatal test for hypochondria, but it is a dominant trait with the men in my family and I am going to nip it in the bud! Nip it! It may be too late for Matt, but Connor has a nice long public school career ahead of him and with God as my witness, he will experience it in an overcrowded classroom with oudated books, not on a tiny cot in a fake clinic!