Imagine the following threat leaving my lips through gritted teeth with flushed cheeks and a vein bulging out of my neck, with spectators looking on from the lounging area of the pool we visited recently:
“Mikey, I am not going to tell you again. It’s time to go!”
How did we get here? Let’s backtrack a bit …
We have officially jumped into full summer mode, which means long days and short nights, a diet of sugar and chips, stinky and dirt-stained feet, and barely a semblance of a schedule.
The 6-year-old goes to summer camp during the week, which I was so excited about at the onset. With morning and afternoon swim sessions, inside gym time, outside recreation, arts and crafts, Gaga, basketball, Wiffle Ball, dodgeball, soccer, floor hockey – you name it, they do it – I was certain the program could wear out even the Energizer Bunny.
Guys, camp is not doing its job.
Somehow, when I pick Mikey up, he is still going strong. As we pull away from the parent pickup line, he’s asking if we can stop at the playground, go to the pool, stop for ice cream … When the answer is no, we end up playing basketball in the driveway, soccer in the yard, the dreaded game of Hike and Seek – the day is endless.
I’ve been THIS CLOSE to driving Mikey right back to camp and telling them their job isn’t done, yet. Run him around the gym a few more times. Have him swim a few more laps. I’m down with anything. Let ’er rip!
Anyway, camp was closed the Thursday and Friday of the Fourth of July weekend, so it was us to me and my husband to wear the child out on our own, over a wide open four-day weekend with no solid plans – my absolute nightmare.
On the holiday we barbecued with family, which is when a gnat flew into his eye. It wasn’t a big deal. He rubbed it a lot. He lived through the experience.
However, he woke up Friday and his eye was all red and irritated – likely due to the fact that he wouldn’t stop touching it and since he’s a 6-year-old boy, his hands are filthy and he was infecting his eye. Being the A-plus parents that we are, we figured, eh, let it go a day and see if it fixes itself.
That day, since it was raining on and off, we went to one of those entertainment places in Danbury where they have indoor mini-golf (if you read my last column you know how much I love that sport), laser tag, bumper cars, arcade, etc. I don’t know which I like more – spending a week’s paycheck in an hour so we can win a kazoo, or leaving with a bout of vertigo from the noise and flashing lights.
His eye was questionable all day, and I’m sure other parents feared it was a case of pink eye and tried to steer clear of us.
Saturday, Mikey woke up looking like the guy from the Goonies.
So to the doctor’s office we went! We had to wait until 9 a.m. when the office opened to call and schedule an appointment, then rush to get the first one they had – which was at the office location further away from our house, since it was a weekend. The doctor shined a light in his eye and confirmed our amateur suspicion: the bug irritated it, and his filthy hands made it worse. We left with a prescription for eye drops.
Half a day later no eye drops had actually made it into his eyeball because he squeezed his eye shut whenever we got close. Even when he was trying to cooperate, he would close it on reflex.
“Did it get in?” he would ask.
“No, bud. You gotta open your eye.”
“It is open!”
And the cycle repeated itself all day.
Sunday his eye was looking better – with no help from the drops, and I decided to take him to the pool at FDR State Park in Yorktown for our last hurrah of the holiday weekend. He loved it. We were there for a long time. The sun was at full brightness and the pool was at max capacity. He likes the spray bay part of it, which means I was getting waterboarded left and right by buckets dumping and jets shooting and sprinklers erupting.
Finally, waterlogged, sunburned, and just dying to send the kid back to camp and get back to work the next day, I gave Mikey the 5-minute warning.
And then I gave it about six more times.
After perhaps eight “One more minute!” requests from the child, I found myself ready to lose my you-know-what.
And that brings us to me, standing in front of half of northern Westchester, telling my son, “I am not going to tell you again. It’s time to go!”
Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were a joke, because what was I going to do when he still refused to leave and I’d already said I’m not going to tell him again? Drag him out by his hair? Leave him there (tempting)? He’s 54 pounds now – I can’t scoop him up and carry him out kicking and screaming like when he was a toddler.
After a standoff, we finally left, under duress, and as we got to the car he actually had the stones to ask me, “Can we go somewhere else now, Mom?”
Mind.Blown.
The only place we went was home, where I handed him the eye drops and told him to administer them himself, to which my husband asked, “You really think that’s gonna work?”
Honestly, at that point, I didn’t care if he drank the darn drops. And for the record, his eye was clear Monday.
Holiday weekends are killer.
Holly Crocco is editor of the Putnam County Times/Press and mother of a 6-year-old. She can be reached at editorial@putnampresstimes.com.
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