Presents are hard to think up at 17 as well. In an unusual twist, our son got a hemorrhoid.
I don’t think it’s what he really wanted, and it hadn’t been mentioned as a potential birthday present when we were coordinating the celebratory dinner.
Instead, once we all got to the restaurant it became the topic of conversation.
When you have a couple of medical types in your parental group, you’re brought up with the idea that most any bodily function or condition is fair game as a dinner topic regardless of who is present. That’s changed a little as they’ve gotten older, recognizing that an 8 year old doesn’t have quite the sensitivity to having some personal topic discussed in front of his playmates that an adolescent does in front of someone they’re dating.
Not being of the healing arts myself, I used to get a medical condition called “blowing a lobe” whenever some topic I wasn’t used to (or particularly comfortable with) came up.
It means that the topic is so outrageous that we have to stop whatever we’re doing and find that part of my brain that just exploded and flew away.
It doesn’t happen quite so much after this many years, but I have to admit at first I thought it would when the subject of hemorrhoids – and his hemorrhoid in particular -- came up at a birthday dinner involving roughly a dozen people, including he and his sister’s dates.
It was soon apparent, though, that it was not only the topic of dinner conversation within the family unit but had been fodder for the rumor mill all over the high school since it’s existence became known.
His friends on the baseball team razzed him for sitting on an innertube during practice.
Not one of those medical ones made for that purpose that you buy at the pharmacy, but an actual tire innertube. I didn’t ask where he got it.
It has apparently brought him sympathy from the girls roughly equal to having a foot amputated as “get well” wishes flowed into his cell phone almost as fast as birthday greetings.
This was a paradox that again, made me almost blow a lobe.
He’s got a healthy attitude, though. “It’s not like it’s anything to be ashamed of. It’s just a medical condition,” he says.
His parents have said this to me many times during the past few years, especially when I’ve been in the process of “blowing a lobe.”
Apparently the worst part of the ordeal has been when his mom explained what the treatment was. The thought of doing that – or having it done – exceeded the pain of the condition. Claiming ownership and control over certain parts of this body, he’s made the determination that some treatment will not occur, and that nature will be allowed to run its course.
We’ll check back on that if it’s still there without improvement in a week.
He says the only embarrassing thing about it has been the number of people that have asked to see it. Apparently hemorrhoids are such an anomaly in high school that, in an effort to broaden their education, the kids want to do independent research.
I haven’t asked whether he’s showed it to anyone or not; there are some things a parent just doesn’t want to know. I suspect, though, that the guys on the baseball team have had their medical knowledge horizons expanded somewhat.
I realized that I’d made a mistake last night when he was sitting there with a couple of his buddies who were kidding him about everyone wanting to see it and I said, “You should have just taken a picture and you could have posted it on FaceBook.”
I swear, I was just kidding.
But the way they all immediately brightened up, I’m afraid to check his profile this morning.
1 comment:
Ralph suggests that he charge people to see it. Entreprenuership.
Itis called maximizing your ASSets in the business world.
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