How Tommy Got That Phillips-head Screw Scar OR "Do you think he wants a boy band-aid or a girl band-aid?"

It started like many weekend mornings-- all of us padding around in our jammies while Papa read the newspaper. I started getting ready for the day and packing up all of our cold weather gear. The day before, it had been sunny and 65. We planned to head out to Kellogg Forest for their annual Maple Syrup weekend, even though it was only 30 degrees and gloomy. After some parental crankiness (towards each other) about our expectations for the day, we set off. It started snowing. In an attempt to maintain my idyllic version of our "family day", I suggested we turn around, stop at Mackenzie's for a sweet snack and head to the museum.
All sugared up and happily playing at the museum, things seemed perfect. Then I heard it. The loudest THWACK I have ever heard followed by... wait, wait... WAHHHHHHH! In the one place on the planet completely designed for small people--- the preschool room at the children's museum--- our little guy bashed his head. He was in the small planetarium reading room area (really just a circular room smaller than our coffee table with a starlit ceiling). Apparently, he tripped over one of the reading pillows and stopped his entire body weight by ramming his forehead into a rounded screw on one of the beams. I grabbed him and knew he was REALLY in pain. It started bleeding immediately and as head wounds are known to do, bled and bled and bled. Before the blood really started gushing and getting stuck in his hair and dripping all over the floor, I looked closely at the wound and saw that it was the perfect little cross found only on a Phillips-head screw. There were a few minutes (seconds maybe) of wondering about going to the hospital and a concussion and all that. As it was, it bled a lot but was a relatively small wound so there was no need for stitches. Within a few minutes wherein he would NOT let me apply an ice pack, he wanted to go back to playing. He was fine, really fine.

Big sister and the rest of us, on the other hand, were obviously in shock. Luna just started screaming and did this on and off for a few hours. She did that terrified (not shrill) scream I associate with the subconscious screaming people do during nightmares. Even after we all knew he was OK, she was still struggling to cope. Stephen kept disappearing into one of the other rooms and leaving me with two screaming children. This idiot supervisor came to ask me a bunch of questions for her incident Report (I know her to be an idiot having nothing to do with her report). I finally told her she had to ask Stephen while I continued to attempt soothing both kids.

The other museum worker (the one in the kids' room who saw it all go down) was actually quite helpful. I liked her, even. And then she went and did it. "Do you think he wants a boy band-aid or a girl band-aid?" WHAT THE FUCK?! First of all, he is screaming and bleeding. I am looking for usefulness at this point. Second, he is a baby and has never watched any of your trashy shows that one finds on gender-specific everything. Third, what the fuck? Luna has been known to request the Cars Pull-ups. My 5-year-old knows enough about the use of language to say "the Pull-ups with the Cars on them" instead of "boy Pull-ups". Well, at least, she knows how to avoid a long lecture from her mother about such things.
In the middle of screaming children, I start saying, "There is no such thing as a boy or girl band-aid. He is a baby with a head wound for God's sake!" (Could this be why Stephen left the room? Hmmmm....)
After Tommy had settled down and I was trying to round up our things and get Luna calm, this idiot dad (he had proven himself an idiot several times in the previous hour I had watched him interact with his own children) stops Luna and me and starts in with some attempt at a joke. It was some stupidity about how Tommy will be fine because of the "guy motto". I just interrupted him and said, "That's not even funny at all." Luna and I just walked away.
It was an action-packed day for us. It has been 4 days and Tommy's head looks great. A nice clean cut. Luna still gets weepy about it whenever we change his band-aid or look at it. She has said several times that she wishes she had fallen instead of her. This freaks me out on some Catholic guilt level but that is another blog entry entirely.

Tommy got to wear a ponytail all week--- mostly to keep his hair out of his wound but maybe just a little bit as a "fuck you" to all those "helpful people" we met last Saturday.