No. 3: Please Don't Eat the Berries

I have been awful at posting lately. I got a new job, which I start on Monday, and have been spending the past few weeks at the old one training my boss's son to take over for me. It is not going well. These people can't even function when I take the afternoon off to go to the dentist, so I fully expect this place to implode when I am gone.

Between work, the kids' sports and my mother's rampant insanity, I have been rather short on down time lately. I have actually started about ten entries (I'm not exaggerating) but I keep getting interrupted - usually by my mom, and usually when I am writing about her - and then its hard to get back in to the flow of things. So today I am starting from scratch and not letting myself have lunch (Fries, the lunch of champions!) until I finish.

I thought a good child story was in order to cleanse your palate. So let me present daughter number three, who is a brilliant child with many fine qualities, but like all other children has some moments of, shall we say, questionable judgment.

She was seven years old when Husband and I got married and moved into a large old house. The first time we brought her over to see the house, I pointed out the bushes clustered around the front porch.

"See those little red berries?" I said. "They are poisonous, DO NOT eat them." When we moved in, I repeated the warning on a daily basis for at least the first week. Regardless, No. 1 came rushing in the house a month or so later to tell me No. 3 was eating the berries.

To say I became hysterical is an understatement. I had visions of my sweet child vomiting, Excorcist-style, then dying in my arms.

I was going to call the Poison Control hotline, but realized they were going to ask me what kind of berries they were and I had no idea, I just knew they were the kind you weren't supposed to eat. I decided to call my dad, since he knows everything, but I couldn't dial the phone because my hands were shaking so badly. No. 1 had to call him for me while I sobbed in the background, convinced that No. 3 was going to start convulsing at any second.

Dad wasn't sure what kind of bush it was and suggested I ask my next door neighbor. We had not known each other long and my only interaction with her had been The Chicken Incident*, so I was a little afraid to ask, but this was a matter of life and death so I sprinted next door. I was not by any means calm or rational so the fact that she helped me so kindly, especially after The Chicken Incident*, is a testament to her fabulosity. She was pretty sure it was a Pyracantha** bush, and being a hoarder of course she had a book about bushes and berries and we were able to make a positive ID.

I called Poison Control, still nowhere near a state of calmness and emotional control, and reported that my child had eaten an undetermined number of Pyracantha** berries. The dispatcher informed me that they were not fatally poisonous and that they would just make her sick. It was at this point that I quickly transitioned from blind panic to relief to murderous rage. All that worry and stress, which undoubtedly would take years off my life, and she wasn't dying?

Dispatcher: How old is the child?

Me, through clenched teeth: Old enough to know better!

Dispatcher: How old is that?

Me, still clenched: Seven

Dispatcher: Oh my, that is old enough to know better. Well, she may have some cramping, vomiting, diarrhea...

Me: She deserves it.

And thus, after much puking and stomach discomfort and very little sympathy, No. 3 did not die.

* An excellent topic for a future entry!

** I have no idea if the spelling is accurate and am far too lazy to google it.