The Blue HAMA Bead
Well, speaking of things missing in body cavities, Akema's hilarious tampon post reminded me I forgot to post about my five-year old son's HAMA bead incident.
Some pre-schools, playing their ultra-conservative card, feel a child is not fit to attend preschool if he has a tiny chunk of plastic wire insulation, otherwise known as the HAMA bead, up his nose. HAMA beads entertain my kids for hours as they arrange the different colored beads on pegged white trays, then pester the nearest adult to iron them so they will meld together and form a solid object, like a "spaceship" or heart.
So, one day, I got a call from one of our beloved pre-school teachers suggesting I take Guy-Guy to Urgent Care due to a blue HAMA bead being up his nose. So, I stopped working and drove over. Guy-guy was pushing on his nose and acting distraught when I arrived. I helped him to the car and got him into his carseat. He was crying about the HAMA bead being up his nose. By cell phone, we made an "appointment" in Pediatric Urgent Care and waited almost two hours to be seen. In the meantime, after two lollipops, Guy-Guy was acting normal again. I should have clued in at this point.
Since he was finally calm. I asked him what had happened. His response, "Well, it was at rest time at school," he raised his voice into a question at the end of that sentence like the Band Camp girl in American Pie, "and I didn't want to rest," again with the voice, "and I was trying to make my friends laugh. And nobody was paying any attention to me." (I think this is what he doesn't like about rest time - my bi-modal child is either sleeping or talking, so always needs a companion.) He continued, "So, I put the HAMA bead up my nose but no one laughed. So, I sniffed it out and did it again. Then, I did it ten more times and on the eleventh one, it stuck." I should also note that he was trying to be thrown out of rest time into the playyard, which he usually re-counts and lists among his biggest accomplishments of the day.
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