Dreamer wants to be a spy when he grows up.  He’d be a good one too.  He owns all sorts of spy gear, and has watched Spy Kids so many times even I know it by heart. He is constantly eavesdrop and later slyly lets Joe and I know he heard our conversation.  Though he has two dead giveaways that makes him a kid and not a spy.  One is a roll on the floor that is nowhere near discreet as he moves from behind one couch to another; and two, a face which might as well have a billboard with blinking lights stating: “I’m lying.”

However his lying face is getting more discrete, a quality I am not very fond of.  But I am his mother, and fortunately he is still not able to lie to my face – thank goodness.  So if I am not sure about the verity of something I look him straight in the eye and slowly ask “is this true?” If it is, he has no problem meeting my gaze and with a bit of sass answering deliberately slowly “yes. it. is.”  But if he doesn’t match my gaze and instead looks to the side and twists his tongue inside his mouth so I can see it protruding through his cheek … Houston, we have a liar.

Spy at work at his spy themed birthday party.

I know that, but the new school secretary doesn’t.  She called to tell me Dreamer had a stomach ache but I missed the call.  By the time I reached her, Dreamer was no longer there and I couldn’t speak to him.  You see, this used to happen a lot last year.  At first I relied on the very experienced Mrs. J, who would tell me wether he looked fine or sick and would then promptly send him back to his class.   Delving deeper, we talked and Dreamer told me he missed me, and just wanted to know I was there.  I understood … he was new to the school, and first grade was a different ballgame so we developed a spy code.  If he called and told me that “it hurt all over” then that was code for “just wanted to say hi.”

Time passed, he adapted and is now a happy kid who loves his school. He stopped calling, and we both forgot about the spy code. So when I missed his call I didn’t know if he was sick or not.  I was tempted to dismiss the whole thing but what if it were true? What if it was his appendix about to burst (if you don’t read my blog often, just know that imminent danger is a constant theme).

So I left the meeting I was in and went to pick up my sick child at school.

When I found him, he had a Greek yogurt mustache from not cleaning his mouth at lunchtime.  I asked him how he felt and he answered “baaaad.”  I ask him if he had gone to the bathroom and he answers “yeeeessss,” and then I ask about lunch and he said:  “oh it was great! I ate it all!”  No child whose stomach hurts that much that he needs to go home eats his whole lunch. So I bent down and looked directly at him and asked “are you sick enough to have called me” and he turned his eyes, and rolled his tongue. Dreamer cried Wolf.

Bored at Starbucks.

By then I had already taken him out of class and so I thought I’d convert this into a teachable moment.  I explained that I had work to do. I didn’t have time to waste driving thirty minutes home, and then driving back to pick up Fearless so we were doomed to the Starbucks down the road, my second office. I took out my laptop and went about my day as if he wasn’t there.  He had a snack, read a book, looked out the window, looked at me, and was utterly bored.  Though to his credit, I did not hear a peep.  He knew he was in trouble so he didn’t dare complain. After close to two hours of this, I told him that unless he is throwing up, has a fever, or is bleeding he needs to try to tough it out at school before calling me.  He remembered the old “it hurts all over” plan, and we both agreed to re-implement the strategy on a need basis only.

We still had one hour to go when the phone rang again.  It was the new school secretary again.  I thought I had forgotten something but instead I hear “your son Fearless …. swallowed an ink pen …. paramedics.”

I dropped everything, and Dreamer and I rushed to the school a block away.  We got there before the ambulance and there was a hubbub of activity at the office.  The new school secretary looked at me and realized I was the same person as before and said: “it’s you again? What a day you are having.”  You can say that again.

Fearless was with the assistant principal.  When he saw me he began to cry.  Turns out he was chewing a pen, it popped, and he swallowed ink. Since the ink is poisonous the school called 9-11 and poison control.  In my time at school, the teacher would send us to wash our mouth and that was that.  But now they call an ambulance.  It’s fine by me … that’s why we pay taxes and it lays to rest the paranoid mom in me … appendicitis, remember?

The very nice rescue team.

Fearless was fine, he was mostly scared that he was going to get into royal trouble since his teacher had taken the pen away from him prior to “the incident.”

I was calm because I knew nothing was really wrong, and the rescue guys couldn’t have been nicer. Still, my day was shot and I still had a mile long to-do list.  Instead of tackling it, here I was at 2:00pm, a whole hour before dismissal, with two perfectly healthy boys in the back seat of my minivan.  They thought it was great, and laughed and played.  There was no mention of ink or stomach aches; just much ado about nothing.

And guess what? Given all the issues that exist in this world and all the children battling real diseases and real accidents … I’m happy just the way things are.  Because last time we had to go to the paramedics Fearless got staples on his head.