Like a Splinter in Your Eye

Yesterday, Ian redeemed himself for last week's malicious plumbing mishap . . . it was one of those days you can't even imagine until you have kids, and then when you're in the thick of it, you stay surprisingly calm --unlike when your child purposefully floods your ceiling-- so here is the briefest summary I can muster: I took Ian to the doctor in town yesterday because we noticed a black spot on his eye and though he wasn't complaining or rubbing it, we thought we should get it checked out, and I knew it was trouble when the pediatrician flooded it with a chemical, looked at it under black light, and then instructed us to immediately head to the opthamologist, but, unfortunately, all the doctors were gone from the nearby East Brunswick office, so we had to head to Bridgewater through the snarl of rush hour traffic, and once we got there, I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and I don't even know where my insurance card is or what my wife's social security number is or whether we have a PPO or a POS or the name of Ian's primary doctor or what Ian's birth weight was or what my cell phone number is or when I was born or my address, so that didn't go so well, and then Ian stoically withstood a battery of eye tests and eye drops and anesthetic rubbed into his eye, and the kind and wonderful doctor was able to swab the chunk of stuff out of his eye with a q-tip because Ian was able to hold very still-- which I'm not sure I would have been able to do-- and she said he must have had a very high tolerance for pain, because most people are extremely agitated if they have anything in their eye, but he had a hunk of wood in it and never complained and if it would have been my older and more dramatic son Alex in the same situation I'm not so sure it would have went so smoothly.