I knew it would come in handy…

#3 is a chewer. He is constantly chewing all kinds of things which are not food. So, it came as no surprise to me today when he came in and said he had swallowed a rubber band. What else is new? He has eaten sticks in the back yard, what’s a rubber band to that? Then he started to cry..

“It’s stuck in my throat.” Gag, sputter, cough, gag

“What is?”

“The rubber band I was chewing. It got stuck in my throat.”

Sigh. “Alright, let me get a flashlight and look. What color was it?”

Sob, gag, cough, sob. “Blue.”

I looked, and sure enough, there it was a tiny bit of blue hanging down behind his uvula. How on earth had it gotten stuck up inside his sinuses? He says he was chewing on it and then started to sneeze. When he took the big “sneezy breath” it got “sucked out of his mouth and up.”

How was I going to get it out? I told him to try blowing his nose. Nothing. Blow it harder. Nothing.

I sent #1 for the tweezers and a bowl. I was either going to pull it out or stick my finger down his throat and see if he could vomit it up.

Tweezers. The only thing scarier than being a kid whose mom is sticking tweezers up his throat, is being the mom doing the sticking… I could drop them, they could slide down the gullet and puncture something, or require surgery to get out, he could throw up on me, or….stop it! Who am I? My mother in law? I’m not the worrier in this family. (Did you hear that? My dear husband just rolled his eyes at me.)

So, back to the medical procedure…I held a flashlight in one hand and the tweezers in the other…went to the left of the uvula…grabbed the little piece hanging down and pulled the whole thing out. Hooray!

I would like to speak to my mother for a second. Mom, remember when we got the operation game when I was a kid? Remember how I could kick everyones a….behind and you said, “If only pulling tiny things out of weird shaped holes with tweezers were a marketable skill, you’d be set for life.”? Remember that mom? Do ya? Well, guess what? It was pretty darn useful, wasn’t it?

Score:
me – 1 Mom – 1,895,417

Watch out, mom! I’m makin’ a comeback.