What to Really Expect - What's Your Point?

Ever hear of foreshadowing? Me too.


It's February vacation and we're headed to my sister's house to let them (destroy her house for a change) play with their cousins. After I finally get the boys dressed and ready, I head upstairs to retrieve my watch. It is from here that I hear the blood curdling screams of my first born.

Like all mammals, I know the differences in my sons' cries. This one was not irate (Gremlin took something belonging to me!) nor was it over-reactive (There is a spider in the basement!!), this scream said, This is my own blood!!!

We meet at the door to my bedroom where HRH is cradling his right hand in his left as blood drips from the puncture wound on the back of his wrist. Gremlin is following surily behind. I grab a towel and apply direct pressure while trying to simultaneously calm him and find out what the hell happened.

Turns out that in the 3.2 minutes I was upstairs, the boys got into a game of poking with sharpened pencils. After repeated "light" pokes to Gremlin's face, he'd had enough and reciprocated by stabbing HRH in the hand with a pencil. I wish there was an "incredulous" font. Are you kidding me?

I steer HRH into the bathroom so we can clean/inspect/band-aid. I instruct Gremlin to go downstairs to retrieve the pencil so I can see if the tip is broken off.

The tiny puncture is slightly black-ish but I can't tell if there's graphite in there or just he's just marked. Also the vein in his wrist is bulging but it doesn't look like it was pricked. Gremlin arrives with the pencil but as I turn to this forensic evidence, he proceeds to poke the bathroom doorjamb with it, rendering the point uncheckable.

When in doubt, call the pedi. I manage to calm HRH's screams and cover the wound with a Scooby Doo band-aid and make yet another call to our doctor. He agrees that maybe he should take a look and off we go, with a quick call to my sister, letting her know about the unplanned pit stop.

Diagnosis: It doesn't look like the pencil tip broke off in his arm and the positioning most likely rules out any bits from traveling to his brain. But essentially, HRH will have a life-long, tiny black dot tattoo.

The boys were also subjected to a lengthy dissertation on the dangers of graphite poisoning (yes, I made up that term), potential enucleation, and general acts of stupidity and violence.

Then we went and played at Auntie's house.