Bring the pain

My sister summed it up best: “Well, he has spent the better part of his life with a black eye.”
Ah, the joy of having a son.
Parker is once again littered with the marks of being a little boy, namely cuts, scratches, bruises and bumps that make him look like he’s was on the receiving end of a Kid Battle Royal. I was standing on my mother’s porch with my sister, and we were commenting on the numerous badges of honor The Dude was sporting.
Among his current marks:
– A cut on his chin. He got this when he was pretending to be a lion and tried to get in the dog’s crate. No, it was not from the dog. For one thing, it was the crate of Murphy the Dachshund, and the most damage he could possible do to you would be if someone threw him at your very hard. Rather, Parker was pretending to be a lion, and his sister, who decided to take part in the animal games, told him that lions belonged in cages. My wife intervened before an actual crating occurred, but as Parker the Lion was being kept from captivity, he was able to scrape his chin on the open gate.
– A nasty purple bruise on his ear. This one I blame on pancakes. I decided to let my wife have some snooze time the other day and took the kids out for breakfast. Upon leaving, Parker, apparently woozy from five pancakes and about 14 gallons of syrup, tripped and fell into the van, turning his head just in time to he didn’t go face first. Since he is 3, Parker is by far the most independent creature on the planet and does not at all need assistance getting in his car seat. (Sure, I have to help him on occasion pull up Spider-Man underpants, but get in a van? WAY too grown up for that.) Anyhow, he went to climb into the car, lost his balance and went into the van door. I tried to catch him and did they big empty two-handed grab while shouting, “NOOOOO!!!!” in that slow-mo movie scream. He cried for a second, but as soon as he saw Allie was holding his stuffed dinosaur, the pain was not the issue. Dinosaur was the issue.
– A spot on his temple that looks like a little bump but has on occasion oozed out some nasty stuff. My mother has decided it was a splinter. I think that it is a distinct possibility, because Parker loves to walk through the woods. Note that I said he likes to walk “through” the woods. He will not be inconvenienced by moving branches out of his way.
- A rash that has made his fingernails pink and glittery. My wife says it is nail polish. I tell her that is absurd, and that clearly he has developed a wicked fungus that is very sparkly.
When Allie was little, she had her fair share of standard bumps and bruises. I remember when she first started walking and we took her to the doctor for a check-up. The front of her legs were all bruised up, and my wife and I were terrified that people would think we had somehow inflicted the bruises on her. The pediatrician assured us that he has, in fact, seen a child or two in his day, and that any child who walks will have bruises on their legs, because they walk with of the delicacy of a boulder rolling down a hill.
But she never got the repeated and visible injuries that Parker keeps getting. Sure, I worried at first what people would say the first couple of times he got black eyes courtesy of a coffee table or my knee. Relax, it was not intentional; I reached, he tripped, and Mr. Face met Mr. Knee. The terrified reaction I had was probably more painful than the actual shot to the noggin.
My mom says that Parker is a lot like me when I was as a child, so it stands to reason that injuries will be more commonplace. I broke a thumb playing one-on-one football. I broke an elbow when I got kicked in soccer (by my own teammate, no less). I broke three ribs playing flag football, which by all accounts is non-contact. We’re just hard-wired to be rough and tumble.
The good news is that I have not had a serious injury in some time. Sure I occasionally get a pinched nerve at this one spot in my back and I have to walk around for a couple of days with my head cocked at an awkward angle. And, if I sit at a desk for too long and stand up, my knee will sometimes buckle when I go to take a step, and I do this marionette-looking stumble until I regain my balance. But as I have gotten older, the daredevil-inspired wounds (read: stupid) have been reduced. I can only assume that in three or so decades, Parker will be doing the same thing. And hopefully by then, that rash on his fingernails will have cleared up.