Another Broken Arm

We have a new annual tradition: The end-of-the-school-year trip to the emergency room. At least we’re making memories.

Last year, on the night before the final day of school, my youngest two daughters, Lucy (then six) and Waffle (then five), chased each other across the second floor of our house. Their mobile battle ended in the laundry room, a place they never go under any other circumstances. They normally drop their dirty clothes wherever they happen to be standing at the time. They are utterly bewildered by hampers. With Waffle hot in pursuit, Lucy slammed the laundry room’s French doors in Waffle’s face. Her defense worked too well. She missed Waffle’s nose but smashed her thumb with a single crushing blow. By the time Waffle walked up to my third-floor attic bedroom, her thumb nail was already purple. My wife Lola and I thought she might lose it. Acting swiftly, we told her to go to bed. We planned to look at the nail in the morning, a delaying tactic endorsed by doctors everywhere—or at least by the tired ones who are also parents.

The next morning, Waffle’s thumb looked even worse. It was a darker, angrier shade of purple. Instead of enjoying the outdoor games scheduled for the last day of school, Waffle found herself in a hospital gown in front of an x-ray machine. Her thumb wasn’t broken, but the doctor did have to punch a hole in the nail without anesthetic to relieve the pressure. I’d like to say Waffle took the pain stoically, but I’m pretty sure you could hear her screams in Ohio. Afterwards, her thumb was too sore to be around anyone who might run into it, like a classroom full of excited preschoolers. At that age, kids are human bumper cars. Waffle missed the entire last day of school and began her summer break one day early. That might have been her plan all along.

It was a terrible, unfortunate event, but nothing that bad could happen again. And it didn’t. This year’s incident was far, far worse. It wasn’t so much a repeat of history as it was calculated revenge. It all started when Waffle and Lucy went outside to play on the sidewalk.