Laying Down the Law

So.... Mom had a bit of an argument with gravity last week, and (as usually happens in such cases) gravity won.  I was at the other end of the room and can honestly say it was one of those falls that you watch in slow motion, thinking this is not going to end well the entire time.  Amazingly, despite going down backwards and landing hard, the final score (so far) is a wrist broken in 2 places on one side, a very sore hand & wrist on the other side, a ridiculously painful lower back, and some truly spectacular bruising. (I said "so far" because we are still waiting for the results of the lumbar MRI, but the X-rays show no fractures.)  Oh, and the cat -- who played the role of "object being tripped over to initiate the fall" -- is totally OK.

I bring this up because 1) it explains why the draft blog post I was going to upload several days ago remains a draft and 2) it gave the Pipsqueak a chance to really lay down the law to Grandma.... and to Uncle Brian while she was at it.

You see, we're one of those families in which everyone worries about worrying someone else while worrying that maybe someone didn't tell us something to avoid worrying us. (Yes, that sometimes really is just as ridiculous as it sounds. We can't help it.)  The result this time was that, despite my texting AJ with the gory details & updates every few minutes, we all quickly agreed that Miri would be really upset if she knew Grandma had gotten hurt, so we woudn't tell her anything until we could also reassure her that Grandma really was OK.

The first crack in our not-so-carefully-constructed wall of silence came not too long after I brought Mom & Dad back home from the ER[1].  AJ had joined us in the ER for a little while -- it was along her route from work to pick up Miri from the dance studio -- so she & Miri got home not too long after Mom had gotten situated on the family room couch as comfortably as possible. As usual, the Pipsqueak called to say they'd gotten home alright and while she was talking with me Mom quietly said something about needing more painkillers... and Ol' Radar Ears on the other end of the line heard that just fine, thank you.

I literally stuttered while trying to figure out how to reply, and came up with something about Grandma had accidentally banged her hand on the corner of some furniture while cleaning. I knew right away that I was in trouble because Miri started to grill me on exactly what was wrong and it was getting hard to keep my story straight... but eventually she decided she was too hungry to wait any more and ended the call so she could have dinner.

I congratulated myself on dodging a bullet.

I was grossly premature with those congratulations.

A couple of days later, I'm at home and the phone rings a little later than usual, Caller ID letting me know it's either my sister or my niece. (Not unusual if one of the cats has done something particularly cute or if homework needs an extra hand.)  I pick up the phone and immediately hear, "Uncle Brian, you lied to me! I know Grandma fell!"  Stuttering a bit all over again, I explained about little white lies and fibbing because none of us wanted her to worry, and that we had planned to tell her all along but were waiting to make sure we knew what would happen next, and pretty much any other excuse I could come up with. (We really did mean well, after all!)

I could've saved myself a lot of time and embarrassment if I'd simply said "yadda yadda blah blah" into the phone for all the good my explanations did.  My niece calmly waited for me to wind down, and then began to speak a little slowly, enunciating every word clearly.

"Uncle Brian, I am smart enough to find out if something is wrong and I am old enough to deal with things that happen. You should not have lied to me even though you did it to be nice because I WILL FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED and I will worry less if I know instead of having to think you may not be telling me the truth. I appreciate your not wanting to worry me but in the future you WILL tell me what is happening so that I don't have any bad surprises and I don't have to worry about not being told the truth.  Understand?"  (That quote isn't verbatim, but it's darn close, I promise.)

I managed to prevent the laughter inside my head from escaping and promised that in the future I would not hold back the truth from her, and the conversation quickly turned to how cute Licorice is, the latest stuff happening with the dance team, which kid fell on the playground at recess, and so on. The call ended with another reminder that I WILL FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED SO YOU TELL ME and that was that.

Funny thing is, about half an hour later I called to check in on Mom to see how she was feeling and she told me that she'd gotten almost the exact same lecture on the phone just before I had.  We laughed about it but both realized that just because Miri isn't quite 10-1/2 doesn't mean we're supposed to treat her with kid gloves... because (we agreed) it will catch up with us in the end, sooner rather than later.

I got a second, albeit shorter, lecture in the car when I picked Miri up after school the next day, so the rules are now very clear.

I'm wondering how much law school is gonna cost...

[1]  This was by far the shortest ER visit any of us have ever had, just roughly four hours from leaving the house to returning. It was a good thing, too; the nurse working with us said that they were already short-handed and that she was only supposed to work a half shift, leaving them even more short-handed after 7pm... and that there had already been 2 callouts for the 11pm shift.  Treat your nursing staff kindly when you're in a hospital, they are likely to be having a truly crappy day.