Ben Learns Something Important

this morning as i am dropping the kids off at day care, Ben shows me two little pebbles. He needs to keep them safe. and i recommend he keep them in his pants pocket so that he knows where they are at.with a little help, he gets the pebbles in his pocket, and off he goes.

tonight as we are getting on pajamas, Tanya throws his pants in the dirty laundry, a couple moments later, Ben starts crying about his rocks. I pull out his pants, and sure enough these pebbles are still in the same pocket from this morning. i put them up on the hope chest, telling him to leave them there, picturing him going to bed with them, and losing them in the middle of the night. no worries, right?

we don't even have his pants on before he starts saying that April just ate one of his rocks. April looks innocent enough, but hey, she's a dog. The pebbles are missing from the hope chest, and Ben only has one in his hand. At least that is one down, i thought.

about an hour later, we hear on of the kids just crying. after a bit, Ben shows up in the TV room trying to say something. I couldn't make anything out, but Tanya saw him pointing to his nose, and asked if Emma had hit him in the nose. He cried no, and started to try and explain it again, and i quickly thought of the worst case scenario with the props at hand, and asked if he had the rock stuck up his nose. to which he cried yes.

the next ten minutes was spent with us shing a very bright flashlight up his nose, trying to pull out a snot ball with a pair of hemeostats, and trying to calm Ben down enough to get somewhere.

Finally we tell Ben that the rock is going to have to stay there because he won't let us get it out. we sit him up, i try a pat him on his back, thinking that maybe i can dislodge it like he's choking or something and have images in my head of some 80 year old Ben talking about how he's never been able to breathe thru his left nostril, and how that kept him out of the war,....

Tanya asks him to blow his nose, she puts the tissue up to his face, and he breathes in a couple times, and then he coughs or sneezes or something, and out falls the pebble. faster then Ben could reach for it, Tanya already scooped it up, and i presume either threw it away, or fed it to April.

Rocks tend to be between a couple thousand to several million years old. this one was rather small, so im guessing it was older. i sure hope that was the most interesting thing that ever happened to it, because i am going to remind Ben of it every couple years or so so that he remembers.