Many of you might not know this but last week my five-year-old son fell down the stairs. I didn’t see it, but I heard the kerplunk from across the house. Quick check: no bleeding, no goose egg, he asks to play with the neighbor boy, I let him, neighbor boy’s dad comes over about 20 minutes later to tell me that my son blew chunks on his son’s dinosaurs. Neighbor boy’s dad is almost seven feet tall, so my first–no second– thought was to put on my Aunt Jemima scarf and grab a scrub brush and Comet.

Then it dawned on me. Fall + hit in the head + chunk blowing = possible concussion.

Now I have to go off on a tangent for a sec. I. HATE. EMERGENCY ROOMS. The reasons should be obvious, but, okay, I’ll tell you: I pick the absolute perfect time of night to arrive at the ZENITH of activity. And then there’s that guy who looks like he’s about ready to see God and some staff person needs his signature on the thing-y. Or on the other end of the stethoscope, there’s the near-toothless woman with the pack of cigarettes in her hand rocking in pain because she’s taking so much meth her teeth are vaporizing.

Good times.

So okay, I know I have to take my son into ER, especially since he threw up a second time on the bed/cot in urgent care. I gotta tell you I’m a wimp because I screamed with every ounce of girl in my body when Zachary vomited laying on his back. It looked like a spastic volcano. Or that scene from The Exorcist.

So we’re in the emergency room and I tell the attendant who just walked over the old lady groaning on the floor that my son keeps vomiting and I’m worried he may have a head injury. He barely looks up to give me this:

Notice the fancy marks on it to measure how much upchuck someone spews? It also has a nice ring around the mouth area so as to protect other ER prisoners from side-spew trajectory.

So after three hours I stood next to my son and, in a show of solidarity, braved the radiation equivalent to a mini-atom bomb when they put him in the CAT scan space ship. Scan was negative, but…somehow, after losing five hours of my life and acquiring a faint greenish glow, I felt a little cheated.

So I took the barf bag home as a souvineior. Then I took a loooooooong look at it:

Is it just me, or could this thing double as a jimmy hat for King Kong?

Just saying.

Happy Friday, ya’ll!