Friday Night!

Written by Ruby A. Iadeluca

Are you a mother? Are you children moved out? Still at home? What do you do on a Friday night for excitement?

Exactly what I was thinking.

If you're a responsible mother of four and your spouse and two of your oldest children are working for the evening, you're most likely left at home to "be" with the other two. You've probably poured yourself a glass of wine. Something young, cheap and sweet (I won't use the "how I like my men" reference here - though it's killing me to not do so). And, like most of the world now-a-days, you've given up all access cable TV for the much cheaper version of entertainment we all know and love: Netflix.

This is me last Friday night. Wine in hand, my dollar-a-bag pretzels on the coffee table, Parks & Recreation episode 71 playing on TV. The two children who are still at home with their mother are the two youngest daughters: 13 y.o. in her room most likely YouTube-ing music videos, though she adamantly swears she's doing her German homework; and the 6 y.o. who is spending her evening annoying her mother by playing with marbles on the coffee table in front of me. She also has at least one empty paper towel tube that she is blowing the marbles through. My attention, wanting to be on the TV, is distracted every few seconds by the noise of a marble bouncing off the top of the coffee table. Annoyed, I try my best to perfect my lip-reading skills so that I can continue to enjoy the semi-quiet of the evening. I prefer to not turn up the TV at every little sound - unlike some other people who live in this house who shall remain nameless...

It wasn't until my sub-conscious heard the slight coughing/gagging noise that make mothers everywhere cringe with the knowledge that someone has just puked or something of equal value. And then my consciousness heard the shrieking/panicked crying that snapped me out of my tune-out-the-kids trance and I realized what was happening.

But alas! It was too late. The marble was already down the esophagus. I could tell immediately that she was breathing fine because she was crying. And continued to cry - loudly - for a period of time. Poor kid. I suppose I can't blame her for freaking out. She seemed to be in a state of shock. Kind of like: "Oh My Gosh I Just Swallowed a Marble And I'm Going To Die!" mixed with "Oh My Gosh I Just Swallowed a Marble And Mom Is Going To Kill Me!" That's a bad combination for the 6-year-old brain to process.

I admit, I went slightly into panic-mode myself. "Oh My Gosh My Kid Just Swallowed a Marble!"

But I did fine. Something about being a mother and the instincts that just take over when something is happening to your child (though they still need to clean up their own vomit when they don't make it to the bathroom). I was level-headed and calm - at least on the outside. I just knew, as I put my arm around her and told her to calm down, what I had to do. I knew where the other kid was, where my purse and car keys were, where the shoes and jackets were. Worst case scenario: a drive to the emergency room. While my brain was doing laps around the house taking a mental inventory of everything that might come in to play, and my mouth and arms were trying to comfort the frightened child, my legs took me straight to the laptop. GOOGLE! "What should you do if you kid swallows a marble?"

Every post I read (oddly enough, most of the posts came from Australia. Things that make you go hmmmm), suggested that I simply wait. Making sure there are no other symptoms like belly-ache, or not being able to breathe properly, we were to wait until the marble popped out the other end. However, many suggestions mentioned that if it were a battery or something with sharp edges, that I should take her immediately to the emergency room. Well, duh!

And while she threw the few remaining marbles quite willingly into the trash, Mommy explained briefly where the marble was and where it would go. That if anything started hurting she needed to tell me right away. The rest of the evening was spent reassuring her and the next day was spent asking her if she needed to go potty or if her belly hurt.

I'm pretty sure she's learned a valuable lesson.

All this brought to mind the story of when my aunt (five years my junior) got a bean stuck up her nose. They couldn't get it out and took her in to see the doctor. The doctor looked and looked and simply couldn't find it. Once something is up your nose, there aren't too many places it can go. There just aren't. I believe the bean was found when they came back out to the car to go home. It was laying on the back seat if I'm not mistaken.

Maybe my aunt is Australian.