Retail Therapy

Something not so lovely happened to Ian on Valentine's Day.

While demonstrating how he could wedge both index fingers in his nostrils at the same time, he had a seizure. I swear I am not making this up. Maybe the episode will just be a cautionary tale to other young nose pickers. But in the moment, watching it, it sucked. Whites of the eyes, clenched body, locked jaw. My spastic 911 call. The whole gory show.

Ian was in the hospital for one day, tested for everything from color blindness to musical aptitude, and given a clean bill of health. Just go home, they said. Maybe it won't happen again.

This is the point in the story when I started contemplating recreational drug use. For myself. On Ian's first night home from the hospital, I crawl into bed behind his tired little body, his mouth sucking rabidly on that thing we used to know as a thumb. He is holding a small Transformer he picked out at Target after he was sprung from the big house. I lay close to him and start taking inventory.

"Ian, how does your heart feel?"

Thumb release: thawp. "My heart? Fine."

"How about your head?"

Thumb release: thawp. "Fine."

"How about your soul?" I had to ask this, as mine was pretty much in the shitter.

Thawp. "What's that?"

"It's that thing inside that feels heavy when you're sad or kind of jumpy when you're happy."

Ian stops sucking and fixes his eyes at a spot on the wall by his bed. He knows what I'm talking about. Poor thing, I'm thinking.

"My soul is sad."

Oh, no. "Why?"

"Because my soul didn't get the Lego city it also wanted at Target."

That'll teach me ...


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