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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Bubblegum terrorism

I'm a firm believer that giving gum to a small child is kind of like giving a nuclear warhead to a terrorist.  Both situations only end in tears and mass casualties.  My husband, on the other hand, is the gum fairy and believes that gum is the perfect motivational tool.  Unfortunately for me, he likes to hand it out right before he is about to disappear for long periods of time, which means I'm always the one left to deal with the fallout.  It's been my experience that gum terrorism usually plays out in one of two ways: either the gum terrorists eats the whole pack and end up with intestinal issues or he has issues keeping it in his mouth and it ends up stuck somewhere.  

When Tyler was about two, I spent an entire day in mommy hell because he couldn't poop.  He spent all day grunting without any gratification for his hard work.  I finally broke down and was about to use a suppository to help things along when I noticed something hanging out of his butt.  Upon further inspection, I discovered that he had a big wad of Juicy Fruit gum hanging out of his rear end.  Of course my dear husband, the gum pusher, was nowhere to be found, so I got to be the one to investigate.  I grabbed the gum and began to pull.  I pulled and pulled and pulled until I dislodged what appeared to be 5 or 6 small packs of gum from his rectum.  Funny thing about butt gum, it looks just like regular gum.  Had I not known where the gum had just been, I would've thought he'd just spit it out.  Thankfully removing the gum plug seemed to do the job, and he didn't require any further assistance in freeing up things down there.  I still can't look at Juicy Fruit without gagging a little bit.

I really wish that I could say that when I recounted this tale of horror to my husband he stopped giving out gum and we lived happily ever after without gluing any more orifices together. Unfortunately, I can't.  

One day, probably a month or two later, I was taking the same child to a play date at a jumpy place in the mall.  We were driving down the highway when Tyler started screaming bloody murder.  I looked in my rear view mirror and discovered that he was attempting to pry his eyes open with his fingers.  Not knowing what the heck was going on, I pulled over in a panic.  Turns out the gum fairy had snuck him a pack of Juicy Fruit as we were heading out, and he managed to use the gum to glue his eyes shut.  I used a wipe and managed to get enough gum off to allow him to regain the use of his eyes.  I called my friend and told her that we were running late because Tyler had glued his eyes shut with gum.  It was truly a testament to how well she knows me when she didn't seem surprised when I told her what had happened.  We got back on the road and five minutes later he started screaming again because apparently his eyes were still stickier than I'd originally thought.  I pulled over again and cleaned him up.  We finally managed to make our play date, but I spent most of the time unsticking Tyler's eyelids every time he blinked to hard.

Bonus Story:

I know there is at least one of you out there who thought that maybe I should've saved the butt gum for my sweet husband and offered it to him as a treat in the hopes that he would be scarred for life and stop giving our children gum.  I'm not that mean.  Karma, however, isn't as nice as I am.  When I was pregnant with Annabelle, we drove to Ohio.  Because its a thirteen hour car ride, we thought it would be a great idea to drive at night so the kids would sleep.  My mother in law went with us, and she took turns driving with my husband.  Our plan totally backfired because the kids refused to sleep and were absolutely miserable because they were exhausted.  When they finally fell asleep, I had the overwhelming urge to pee.  I didn't want to wake them up, so I peed in a leftover to go cup.  Not wanting it to spill, I put the lid back on and put in back in the cup holder.  I didn't think anything about it until we made a stop sometime later, and I saw my sweet hubby, who had been asleep up until we stopped, drinking from the pee cup.  I passed him just as he took a huge sip, and he looked at me and said, "Honey, I don't know how you drank this at dinner.   That's got to be the worst Sprite I've ever tasted!"

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