Finding the funny

Last night my son stabbed me.

We were goofing around in the kitchen and he was hugging me by the neck. I think there is a technical wrestling term for that, but I don't know what it is. As he pulled me tighter and his hand came closer to my face, the mechanical pencil he forgot he was holding jabbed into my cheek. And then pulled down.

Man, it hurt! It hurt badly. I squealed or made some other sound of pain and we jumped apart. I had no idea what had happened till I saw the pencil in his hand and the shocked look on his face. The seminarian came bounding into the room asking what had happened. I ran to the bathroom to check the damage. There was a lot of blood.

While I was in the bathroom trying to stop the bleeding I could hear the conversation in the kitchen. My Boy Scout - you know, the one who has his First Aid merit badge and is working on his Emergency Preparedness badge - was blubbering incoherently about macadamia nut cookies. (We had been teasing about some cookies we'd bought today.) His dad got frustrated. His voice got a little loud as he tried to figure out what was going on. "Why are you talking about macadamia cookies?" The boy got a little angry then. This had the potential to turn into one of those bad teen/parent moments. All because of a little youthful exuberance and carelessness.

I cam back into the room and explained what happened. As the seminarian examined the wound and got me some ice, he said to the boy - wait for it; you know what's coming:

"You could have put her eye out."

Oh my. Who doesn't laugh when hearing that? How many times have we joked with that line? He wasn't laughing when he said it, but soon I was. I tried, oh how I tried not to laugh. Laughing was the wrong thing to do. But, it came out. It exploded out of me. The seminarian stared at me and then burst out too. My girl started to giggle. Only the boy was not laughing. He was crying harder and angrier than ever.

We made the decision to call the doctor and were squeezed into his late-evening hours. The doc had a hard time figuring out what to write on my chart, but he emphasized the word "accident" in his report. Then he asked "how long are you going to ground your son for?"

I hadn't even thought of that. We all laughed and said we figure he'd suffered enough. I'm sure that during the hour we were gone he was stewing. I came home with a tetanus booster in my arm and some lovely butterfly bandages across my 4-centimeter slash.

The boy apologized, again. We told First Aid Boy that if he had had to call 911 he would need to do better than babble about macadamia cookies. We talked about being careful when holding dangerous objects, even everyday ones. Then we all laughed about the entire incident.

It's good to find the funny when we can. I guess he could have put my eye out. By God's grace he did not. But he got a good lesson, I think.

And a great story for the grandchildren!