On the Way Home From School...

On the way home from school the other day, Ty shouts from the back seat of the Odyssey, "Mom. Today I stuck an eraser in my ear, and it must have fallen out on it's own, because I didn't take it out."

What does a mother do with that statement?

This mother decided to wait until we got home to even touch it because I knew I wasn't going to get any answers to the 700,000 questions I had in a car full of school tired/amped up kids. If he really did have an eraser in his ear, it wasn't going anywhere (unless it fell out on it's own...)

Once at home I calmly started in on my 700,000 question - with the patience of a much better mother - I don't know where that came from. Probably from the laugh-ability of the situation.

"How did it get in there?"
"Did you stick your pencil in your ear?"
"Was anyone watching?"
"Were you trying to show off?"
"What were you doing at the time?"
"Does your ear hurt?"
"Can you hear ok?"

OH! and, "Why did you do that?!?"

I'll spare you his answers because none of them are fulfilling or make sense. The gist of it was... he just did it.

Being as it was March and only weeks before his 7th birthday, I thought we were out of the woods with this kind of sticking-things-in-your-orifices behavior. But you know what they say...

Apparently Not.

Finding this little eraser in his ear was not as easy as I thought. I did get one satisfactory answer to one of  my questions, "Which ear did you stick it in?"  At least we had somewhere to start. With the flashlight clamped between my teeth so that I could use both hands to tug and pry apart his ear, I was finally in a position to ask one more question.

"What color was the eraser?"

One more satisfactory answer for the win. "Pink" So, unless the inside of his ear was unnaturally pink, I was pretty sure I had spotted the culprit.

Ty was not happy when I informed him we had to go to the doctor in order to get it out. This made him a little nervous. "Is it going to hurt?" I told him gently that I didn't know - because I wanted him to sweat it a little. No repeats! Right, folks! Then, one final request on his part, "Can we tell the doctor that the eraser just GOT in there, not that I put it in there?" You can't make this stuff up! I gently told him we couldn't do that (because of the dozen or so sarcastic remarks that came to mind, none of them seemed very nurturing.)

Once inside the office, after telling the nurse the reason for our visit was "An eraser in his ear" the doctor came and took a really cool LED light up wand and quickly and painlessly removed the eraser. You can guess, by the above picture that I asked him, "Would I be a bad mom if I took a picture of this?" I didn't really care about his response, because there was nothing that was going to stop me from documenting this event.

Then of course, the doc and I covered all of the other bodily orifices that he was NOT to stick things in. Job. Well. Done.

Once at home, Ty told me in all seriousness, "Mom. I'm really glad the doctor took the eraser out of my ear, because I didn't want to have eraser poop."

Eraser Poop.

That is just too priceless. How many more years of these childlike little zingers do I even have left? I have to savor it while I still can.