I’m working from home today to be around my 12-year-old son, who had to return home from sleepaway camp for a few days after getting a concussion. It was a traumatic sequence of events—falling backward off of a chair perched too far over the side of the porch of his bunk; laid out on his back, ripped with pain; a rush to the ER. But I’m comfortable sharing because he’s much better already and expected to have a full recovery. Indeed, he’s already up to his old tricks.
So when I first enter our kitchen and dining area this morning, I noticed a puddle of water on the table, another puddle on the floor, and a big wet spot on one of the nearby chairs. Someone obviously made a mess—and they did not clean it up. The evidence points to Adam over my wife or my 16-year-old daughter.
“Adam, what happened?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t me. ”
(Of course not.)
Then I found the smoking gun—an uneaten peach sitting in a mug on the table. The quick deduction was that the peach got stuffed in the mug pushing out all the water that must have been in it.
“Adam, what’s this peach doing in the mug?”
“I don’t know. ”
(Of course not.)
“Come on. This has all the trademarks of one of your operations.”
“Okay, fine, but I didn’t know there was water in the cup. I was just trying to do a Kobe [as in Kobe Bryant] and get the peach in the cup.”
“And why didn’t you clean up?”
(Here it comes.)
“Because I have a concussion.”
(Wait, wait, he has another idea.)
“Because I wanted to create a splish-splash water slide on the floor for Lucy [our dog].”
There were a few hours on Sunday night when we all were fearful that he may have broken a bone in his back or neck, and the scenarios got worse from there. He slammed hard into a rugged patch of ground, and is still wobbly and achy. But the concussion itself wasn’t that bad and is expected to heal in full. At the moment, this other stuff – everyday joys like having a peach plopped into a mug to create a splash party—I’m happily accept right now as my lot as his parent.
Eric Messinger is the editor of New York Family. He can be reached at [email protected]
