Domestic Oblivion

Never Thought I’d Be Doing This #331298

Last night we were getting ready to head over to the community pool for an after dinner dip.  I was upstairs trying to locate my swimsuit, and the kids were all milling about on the front porch waiting for me.  A very high pitched, panicky scream was followed by the door slamming.

“Don’t touch it!  Don’t touch it!  DON’T TOUCH IT!”, combined with “I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

Bowman runs into my bedroom looking like a dear in the headlights.  Cutter walks in holding Bowman’s new Stream Machine water gun, crying and wailing.  Cutter then screams:

“HE SUCKED UP MY BELLY BUTTON!  MY ENTIRE BELLY BUTTON!”

Ah.  That would explain why he was holding the squirt gun so it was pointing directly at the middle of his stomach. 

I calm Cutter down enough to get him to stop screaming.  I reassure him that I won’t hurt him, I just need to see what’s happened.  I talk him into letting me hold the squirt gun.  Lo and behold, his entire belly button is sucked up into the water hole of the gun.  I give it the smallest of tugs….. “OOOOOWWWWWW!”  Okay, so I’m not pulling it off.

Thankfully, it’s possible to unscrew the end of the gun.  Now I’m standing there looking at Cutter with a large black disk around his belly button, with the button itself sort of cauliflowering out of the center.

A number of things fly through my brain:

1.  Great.  They are going to laugh SO HARD at me at the emergency room.

2.  This actually is REALLY funny.  Ooops!  Don’t smile, kid is hurt and freaking out.

3.  Never thought I’d be doing this.

4.  How in the holy hell am I going to get this thing off of here without hurting him more?

5.  It would be bad to ask to take a picture, wouldn’t it?  Probably shouldn’t do that……

I look at Cutter and ask if he’s got any ideas.  He suggests liquid soap, the little smarty.  A couple of squirts of lavender hand soap, and although it was painful, he was able to free his belly button from captivity.  Whew!  Disaster and emergency room visit diverted.  We were late meeting our friends at the pool.  While I was explaining why we were late, my friend burst out laughing and suggests we contact the squirt gun manufacturer and have them add to the directions “DO NOT SUCK UP BELLY BOTTON”.  Oh lord, can you imagine that line drawing?

5 Comments so far
Leave a comment