I haven’t heard back about what the teacher thought

Last Friday Sassy had an incident on the playground that necessitated a call from the school nurse. Sassy is a “frequent flier” to the nurse’s office. I guess that’s what you can expect when you have a drama queen. Mostly the nurse wanted to give me a head’s up so when my child got home and related the tale I would have some sane background information.

It seems that Sassy was going down the slide and the next child followed too quickly and landed on her hand. There was no bruising or swelling so the nurse put the obligatory ice pack on it and wrapped it with an Ace bandage to pacify the girl. Sassy seemed fine unless she had an audience, then she fell apart. When asked to retell the facts of the incident, Politically Correct Sassy described the boy as large. Her brother, less inhibited by polite society, described him as “a fatty”.

Over the course of the weekend she carried that arm around like it would fall off at any minute. We bought additional bandages because the first one was quickly covered in spaghetti sauce and chocolate pudding. There was a great deal of whining, as I’m certain you can imagine, about cleaning her room and doing chores. I offered to cut it off with the hedge clippers so that it wouldn’t hurt anymore, but she wasn’t going for it.

Her father and I bandied about taking her to the ER for x-rays but I vetoed it because THERE WAS NO SWELLING OR BRUISING. At all. No matter how many times I tell her the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf and explain the moral to her she simply doesn’t get it. I told her father that we’d give it another week and if she was still complaining we could take her to the doctor and, if it turned out that her arm was really broken, then we’d have to buy her a corvette. Until then, I wasn’t wasting fifty dollars on needless medical expenses. That’s money I could be using for Starbucks.

Then Sunday night came along. The wounded girl began to concern herself with school the next morning. How could she possibly be expected to participate in any scholastic activities when she was in this much pain. How? Her father told her to have me write a note to the teacher. I rolled my eyes but I did it.

Sassy wasn’t happy with the note. I don’t know why? See what you think – I’ve included the text here.

Dear Sassy’s Teacher,

Sassy Bright was injured on the playground Friday afternoon and her arm is still limp and barely functioning. Please excuse her from any strenuous third grade activities that might cause further injury (ie. shoveling gravel or breaking concrete).

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,

Amylynn Bright