So last Saturday the boy and I went to see my dad; I knew he was going to have his place to himself so I thought it’d be a good time to have a bit of a boys’ get-together with him. We really didn’t get to have much of a cordial visit, because Evan was into…well…everything. I had to peel the boy off of, at various times, a sword hanging on the wall, two shotguns leaned up in the corner behind the front door, a lighter that was left out on a table, about six thousand pill bottles, and a back door that he could easily open. Not much of a relaxed visit, but my dad got a couple of hours’ worth of seeing me be a dad for a change.
Another thing that Evan wouldn’t keep away from was my dad’s space heater. I got him away from it before he could burn himself, every time he tried to jump on it (literally – he treated the white “tower” fan in my room at home the same way, which is why it’s no longer in my room). Finally, he tripped over his own feet trying to make a running jump at the space heater. I grabbed his ankles and dragged him back to the chair that I was trying to remain seated in as much as possible. The boy giggled his head off and said “Again!” and threw himself in the floor face first. So I dragged him back to me again. The carpet at my dad’s place isn’t like the carpet here, so I figured it was just tickling him. He kept giggling and throwing himself in the floor, and we did this for about ten minutes.
I’m not sure “horror” is an adequate word to describe what I felt when I took Evan’s shirt off at bedtime that night and saw the gigantic patch of carpet burn on his tummy. It looks terrible. I had made sure his shirt wasn’t riding up when I was playing with him earlier in the day, and at no point had he made any protest – I would’ve stopped at the slightest indication that it was hurting him. And the fact that he hadn’t made any noises about being in pain since then told me that it wasn’t hurting him now either.
But when he looked down and saw that he was damaged? Oh boy. Freaked. The. Hell. Out. Probably took him half an hour to stop crying hysterically.
When I took him to day care on Monday morning, I carefully explained to his teachers and to the day care administrator exactly what they’d see if they or he lifted his shirt, and why it was there, and hopefully made a convincing case for why they shouldn’t call the cops to haul me off for doing horrible things to the boy. They seemed to get it. I’d like to think they know by now that I love this little guy more than any other human being on the planet – in fact, more than most other human beings on the planet combined (if this includes you, I’m sorry, but that’s just how I feel; if you’re not human, please disregard) – so I wouldn’t deliberately do anything to make this happen.
Sorry, buddy. But now you can show everyone your war wounds and freak them out too. He’s already demonstrated a willingness to show it off to his teachers – he lets them look, then covers it with his hand and plaintively says “MY BOO BOO.” :-/
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