Eldest & I had an argument today. He wanted to go to work, I wanted him to stay home. Usually it's the teenagers that want to stay home & the parents that want them to go to work, heck, it's that way for much of the workforce any excuse will do. Eldest, methinks, had a great excuse to stay home. The boy had two broken bones in his right arm. And he's a camp counselor, not the easiest, non-physical-est job in the world. His point was that he loses money if he stays home, and he was going to miss on the day he gets his real cast again then that would be two days. Why should he miss two days? Two days equals a lot of lost dollars. In the end he won and he went to work.
Now if I'd seen the xrays before he went to work I might've fought harder. While I understood the part about the broken bones, I heard 'clean' break and thought we were good. Slap on a cast, wait 6 weeks, no problem. Then I saw the xray. He broke all the way through both bones, right at the big lumpy parts where the bones connect to the wrist. In the case of the radius he not only broke all the way through, but halfway through the break splits and makes a second break up into the bone. Not quite as neat & 'clean' as I was thinking.
Luckily, after a mere 4 hours on the phone, I managed to get him in to an orthopedic surgeon bright & early tomorrow morning. I will feel a lot better with Eldest safe & secure in a sturdy cast, versus that flimsy piece of pseudo-fiberglass he has strapped halfway around his arm. Or I should say, sometimes strapped halfway around his arm. The boy keeps unwrapping it. Ostensibly to ice it, but, I suspect, really because it's hot & itchy. Not that a real, sturdy cast won't be hot & itchy but at least he can't unwrap... though the last time he had a cast by week 3 he was able to slip his arm out. Maybe he forgot about that trick?
By now, I'm sure, you are all wondering how he did it. Well. De Opa had bought Squareboy a new frisbee. So, of course, the new frisbee floated on up to the roof. Eldest, being a world class tree climber since age 2 went to climb a tree, to get to the roof, to get the frisbee. The thing is, he's not 2 anymore. And while he grew the tree grew too, but not at the same rate. And so as he put his big almost-17-year--old weight on the tree, the tree said "NO!" and it's one & only branch snapped right off. And poor Eldest tumbled to the ground. The thing is, he wasn't very high up. This I can prove. Because when you do something so silly as climb a tiny tree and take a tiny tumble out of the tiny tree and break your arm in a big way, there is no punishment a parent can give a child. Except to embarrass him:
Not that he's embarrassed. Eldest's only worry is the tan line he'll have when summer is over & the cast comes off.
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