Number one, I hate it when the school nurse calls me to tell me my daughter is sick. Above and beyond the primal worry for my child's health, is the guilt I feel at not having taken Bunny more seriously this morning, when she said she was mopey and she didn't want to go. Mopey? Don't want to leave the house? Shit, I feel like that every Monday. That's like a baseline frame of mind for me. What else did you bring to the table, kid?
Well this is obviously Wrongful Thinking on my part, and Projecting, to boot. Bad Mommy. Bunny isn't bitter and underemployed, suffering from cognitive dissonance about her Mondays - she likes school. When she's mopey, she doesn't need a pep talk, she needs a thermometer. I will remember that from now on. I will.
Anyway, the school nurse called and left me a voice mail message - Bunny has a fever of 99, which isn't high, she says, and if I prefer, the nurse can release Bunny back to class. We can clearly see here that Nature attempted to lay another guilt trap for me this morning. If I were to call back and make the school nurse shoo my daughter back to class, it would only worsen the black mark on my soul. I don't know much, but I do know to collect my child from school if the nurse calls. Or have BB do it, which in this case he was able to.
In the second place, what is it about balloons? Balloons have always made me very nervous. (I'd post a picture, but TypePad appears to have gone to the zoo today and won't accept one.) You see those great big mylar balloons in the grocery stores, swaying in the breeze of the air-conditioning, waiting together to be purchased for birthdays and grad parties. In fact, they seem to cluster together, even when they're not tethered. And they hang around waaay up high, where nobody can eavesdrop on them. Some might say that's where the balloons naturally float, due to the light weight of the helium inside, to which I reply, oh sure, how conveeeenient for them.
What can they have to say to each other, that such privacy is so all-important? I walk underneath a cluster near the greeting card aisle. They stop talking and watch me for a while. If they had opposable thumbs, I know they'd drop stuff on my head.
Some grocery stores have giant net baskets attached to the ceiling, and all the balloons are corralled in there. But why? The balloons already have big plastic buttons on the ends of their strings; they can't fly away. Why would this be necessary? You can't tell me the reason isn't to segregate the balloons. The managers are trying to keep the balloons isolated, so they can't incite other objects with talk of the coming inanimate object revolution.
Stop scaring me! I'll never be able to walk around in the grocery store in relative comfort again. ACK!
Posted by: Snowball | May 24, 2004 at 06:49 PM
Baloons make me nervous too! And people laugh at me! We must be some parallel-universe 3rd cousins or somesuch!
Posted by: anna4403 | May 24, 2004 at 09:39 PM
Yeah, creepy. Ooh!
Eliz was sort of "sick" this morning, too. I went so far as to take her to the door of school, and then she wouldn't get out of the car. Oy vey.
Posted by: jo | May 24, 2004 at 09:40 PM
Man, balloons make me so nervous, there's a whole 'nother blog entry in it.
Jo, we just decided to let our daughter have another sick day, whether she had a fever or not. It really took the pressure off of her to try to work one up this morning. :-)
Posted by: pam | May 25, 2004 at 06:52 AM
Ninety-nine? A nurse called you about a so-called fever of ninety-nine? What is she--some kind of pussy?
In warm weather, a kid can get a fever like that from just climbing the stairs, for crissake--no joke.
I hate it when schools try to guilt-trip me. The rotten bastards.
Apparently those mylar balloons can cause a heap o'trouble (sedition and the like, I imagine) when they escape from their captors and congregate on the ceiling of Grand Central Station. I know it's true--I read all about it in the New Yorker (Ian Frazier piece).
Posted by: jilbur | May 25, 2004 at 11:05 AM
Jill, I'd be willing to bet if this had happened during the all-important state STAR testing, that nurse would have been instructed to tell the kids to suck it up. Broken arm? You can still write with the other hand! Get back in there!
Posted by: pam | May 25, 2004 at 03:37 PM
Balloons give me the creeps in a serious way!
As for the little one...don't let the school nurse bully you into anything.
Posted by: Hula Doula | May 25, 2004 at 06:35 PM