Things I Will Need For the New School Year: A Bubble and a Shotgun

Yesterday was the second day of school, so naturally I needed to take Fourth Grader to see a doctor.

It seems she made it all of ninety minutes on that first day before making her way to the nurse's office. She loves to go to the nurse's office. Her excuse, on this first journey, was that she had a cough. So the nurse gave her a cough drop and sent her back to class, refraining from calling me to report the visit until the end of the school day. "I'm sure you were expecting to hear from me today," she said, and she was right. I think out of 180 days of school last year, the nurse called me on about 150 of them for one reason or another. The majority of those reasons were comical. Fourth Grader is remarkably germ resistant and rarely gets sick. Can't walk a straight line without smacking her head on something, but remarkably germ resistant.

The Day Two call was a little less jovial. The nurse's concern over Fourth Grader's cough had escalated. She grilled me - in a friendly way - about the length of time I had noticed this cough going on and had neglected to rush her to the ER to be thoroughly sanitized. FINE, I said. I'll take her to see the doctor.

So last night we went to After Hours care to have her looked at. The After Hours care doctor concluded that it was most likely a ragweed allergy. To my comment that the school nurse practically insisted that I drag Fourth Grader in to have this cough checked out, the doctor said "I'm sure she just wanted to confirm that it isn't Swine Flu." I have never met this doctor before in my life, but somehow we managed to then perfectly synchronize the rolling of our eyes.

On the way home from the doctor's office, Fourth Grader exclaimed "Oh shoot!" It had dawned on her that she was supposed to pass a message along to her sister after school and had forgotten to do so.

"It's from (insert sixth grade boy's name here). He wanted me to tell her that she's hotter than the sun."

.........

"Oh?" I said.

"Yeah. And then (insert other sixth grade boy's name here) came over and said she's pretty much the hottest girl in school."

........

"What's wrong, mama? You seem upset."