My Forgetful Brain Caused an Emergency Room Visit for My Kid

Sure, I admit that sometimes I can be a tad forgetful. Like the time I forgot what my address was while getting driven home from a date. Awkward.

Or when I was having a pedicure done with my mother-in-law, and the esthetician asked how old my kids were, and for some unknown reason, their ages completely blanked in my brain, and I made a wild random guess.

“2 and 5,” I had said, hoping to sound like an authority on the matter.

“Lars is 4, Lindsay,” my mother-in-law corrected. “They’re two years apart from one another.

Boy was face red. As red as the polish being painted upon the big toe at the time.

However, the worst consequence of my forgetful brain was the time I forgot about a much anticipated birthday party my son was to attend — the result: dire.

I had been cleaning the house. It was the sort of cleaning job that escalates without you even realizing it. Washing the floors turned into scrubbing the baseboards. Wiping down the fridge resulted in pulling out everything (even that leftover curry from three weeks ago on the back shelf) and madly cleaning the entire inside of the refrigerator in the process.

This is all to say; my brain was sidetracked. All I could think about was cleaning!

Eventually, my 6-year-old came running out of the room, saying, “ Moooom is it time to go to Jordan’s yet?”

Fuuuck.

I had forgotten about the party. I looked at the clock. The party had already commenced. The party was, in fact, half over.

When you find yourself in this sort of situation, there are two ways to look at it. You can either lie, say that the party was cancelled and deal with the consequences later (Jordan telling my kid that his party wasn’t cancelled the following Monday at school) or own up to your mistake and admit you aren’t perfect. You have forgotten a pivotal event in your child’s social calendar.

I figured option number two was the right way to go.

Oh, how wrong I was.

Lars was not impressed. He stomped off to his room, yelling, “You’re the worst Mama ever!” I know. It sounds adorable. At the time, though, it was anything but.

I gave him a few minutes, then knocked on his bedroom door, asking if he’d like to go for the second part of the party. After all, that was the best part because that’s when the cake part happened.

He opened the door, his eyes huge, a worried look on his face.

“I did something bad,” he said, and my heart dropped.

He pointed to his ear before I could ask what he’d done and revealed that he had shoved a small bead into the drum.

So far into the drum that it was unretrievable.

Believe me, I tried.

My husband and I tried for hours to remove the bead. The grandparents came over and tried to remove the bead. A stranger walking down the sidewalk in front of our house tried to remove the bead. No going. Nobody was getting that bead out.

We headed to the emergency room. When the doctor on duty asked Lars why he shoved a bead into his ear, my son simply said, “My mom forgot to take me to a party, so I was getting her back.”

So matter of fact, my son.

As it turned out, not even the emergency room doctor could remove the bead — such was the vengeance with which Lars rammed the thing into his ear canal.

We had to book him in for day surgery to get a local anesthetic so the doctors could get in there to retrieve the bead.

I learned a crucial lesson that day — my son is a scheming scoundrel, and I will never test his ability for revenge again.

Now, all-important party dates go on my calendar as soon as the invites come rolling in.

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This post was previously published on it’s just foam.

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