KEEPING IN STITCHES

Click here to return to the main menu.

That’s my boy.

Proving that being injury-prone is a genetic trait that is stapled, perhaps on accident, to the Y-chromosome, my son Parker has made his old man proud by getting wounded in a fashion that most people never even thought possible.

Now, before you start thinking I am an insensitive, uncaring father, I will go ahead and let you know that he is perfectly fine, and doctors say that many people live long, healthy lives with a cranium-fused Elmo doll.

Ha! Little light humor to ease the mood of toddler injury. If that’s possible. Actually, my son got stitches in his hand (or perhaps, more appropriately, stitch; I can’t tell, and he’s in no mood to show us said boo-boo).

Here is how I heard about the incident. I was at work when I got a phone call from my wife. In a very calm manner, my wife said, “Hey, just wanted to let you know that I am taking Parker to the doctor’s office. He cut his hand and he may need stitches.” Now, that is not the way you deliver that message. The way you deliver that message is through hyperventilating spurts: “PARKER .... HAND .... BLOOD!!!”

But my wife delivered the news as if she were telling me that she was taking Parker with her to the grocery store, a testament to the fact that she is very calm under pressure. Or perhaps medicated.

I immediately went into spastic-dad mode. “What happened? Do you want me to come over there? Is he OK? Where’s Allie? What’s for dinner?” Sometimes all the thoughts flow at once.

My wife calmly responded, “You’re spazzing. Stop it. It’s under control. And chicken.”

It turns out that my son had been playing with a tape measure, which I thought was one of the more benign tools around the house. I would never let him play with, say, a bandsaw. (My wife vetoed that.) But kids love playing with measuring tapes. They make cool noises and are just generally gobs of fun. Well, it turns out, a thin piece of metal zipping across a kid’s hand is like the big brother of a paper cut. Parker’s hand got sliced in the webbing right between his thumb and forefinger and, based on the reddish hue of my tape measure post-accident, he bled profusely. (Also, upon inspection, I learned that the cut took place at the 32-inch mark.)

When he got to the office, his pediatrician decided to stitch him up there. Because the cut was fairly small, he was going to have to do it without anesthesia, since the anesthesia would have been more pokes than the sewing-up part. Based on my wife’s recount of the situation, a 2-year-old getting non-anesthetized stitches is only slightly less strong than three adults. Also, we learned that Parker’s sister does not like to hear her brother scream, and blocks this out by singing at the top of her lungs, “IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY. IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY. IT’S A BEAUTIFUL DAY.”) A co-worker of mine was at the doctor’s office at the same time, and when I saw her later in the day, she said, “Did Parker get stitches?” I affirmed that he had, and she said, “Yeah, I heard him.” Glad we could share with the other patients. And perhaps some people several buildings over.

Hopefully, this will be the end of Parker’s freaky accidents. He is a 2-year-old, so he gets his fair share of bumps and bruises and even black eyes (coffee table 2, Parker 0). I, unfortunately, have made many a doctor quite wealthy on a wide array of odd injuries. I received stitches in my foot when a hotel door was opened into it, slicing it wide open. I got stitches in my leg when I tried to dunk a basketball by jumping from a small stool and subsequently falling and smashing my leg open on said stool. I hurt my back when I was trying to demonstrate the amazing power of my slick shoes and “street ski” down a wet street. I even shot myself in the hand with a pellet gun. You know, come to think of it, it’s not that I have freakish bad luck. I think I’m just an idiot with bad judgment. Maybe Parker’s accident was not a genetic predisposition to odd wounds. Maybe he’s becoming a direct recipient of his father’s inclination to find new and exciting ways to damage the flesh. I’m going to start working hard at eliminating things around the house that could present dangerous situations thanks to my incompetence. And I am starting right now. He’ll just have to wait until he’s older for that chainsaw.