The Clavicle that Broke Summer

A few years ago, Taylor and I went on The Week-Long Beach Vacation from Hell.

(That’s not fair, actually. The first day was great, so really it was The Six-Day Beach Vacation From Hell.)

I reference this trip often because it was, like, so bad.

Least of all colossal fails was 8 month old Davis breaking his collarbone back at home. I found out over a spotty FaceTime connection, only catching every other word.

“took a fall….maybe broken….x-rays….urgent care”

You might think this is a once-in-a-childhood event, breaking a collarbone while your parents are far, far away.

I’m sure for normal families it is, but we typically don’t do normal.

Which is why, 5 weeks ago – when I was 6,500 miles away from my family, halfway through my trip to Ghana, West Africa – I was only mildly surprised to hear Taylor say (over yet another spotty FaceTime connection),

“leaving now….urgent care….x-ray Davis’ collarbone….possibly broken”

Spoiler alert: it was.

(The other one this time. He’s nothing if not proportionate.)

I mean…how.

I’ve traveled for more than a week exactly 2 times in Davis’ entire life. Dude is 2 FOR 2 on breaking HIS CLAVICLE during said times.

HOW.

Anyway, thanks to our little self-sabateur, the boys and I have been benched from All Fun Things for the past 5 weeks.

All of us, because we’re a team. If one is out, we’re all out, which means:

• No trampoline parks.
• No playgrounds.
• No wrestling.
• No climbing.
• No backyard baseball.

This might not be a big deal if we were not IN THE MIDDLE OF SUMMERTIME.

(Summer, if you’ll remember, is the time of year when all children are out of school, when little boys are at full energy capacity, and when moms are desperate for exhaustingly fun activities.)

If I thought my boys were nuts before, I had no idea what 35 straight days of, “You guys want to go to the library again? Paint with Bob Ross on Netflix? Meditative yoga? Benadryl naps?” would do to them.

So much time cooped up at home doing lame stuff.

At this point they are desperate to go out and chop down a tree. Run the Boston Marathon. Scale Everest.

Anything.

They have enough energy to power a small country.

So much energy…so much brute force, in fact…that they might unintentionally kill each other.

For instance, in a moment of sheer idiotic stir-craziness the other day, one kid launched a fork through the air and accidentally stuck in another kid’s cheek.

(I’ll say that again because you may wonder if you read it wrong.)

One boy threw a fork SO hard that it IMPALED another boy’s face and had to be FORCIBLY REMOVED.

Stated yet another way: our silverware is incredibly aerodynamic.

It’s because of bronanigans like this that I, also, could chop down a tree, run the Boston Marathon, or scale Everest at this point.

Did I mention that, simultaneous to all of this pent up energy, it is my husband’s busy season at work?

…yeah.

On Fork Day, as we now call it, I loaded everyone up and took them to a public parking lot where I could run sprints until I threw up and they could ride bikes (or do whatever the heck they wanted to do that didn’t involve re-breaking a clavicle or dying, preferably in that order).

The park was *mostly* empty, sans about a dozen cars in the adjacent parking lot and some families milling around on the baseball fields about 100 yards away.

Perfect place for me to let out some mom-steam and them to act like maniacs.

Everything was going great……………….until I was reminded of the laxative I’d doled out that morning to the son in need of some…intestinal assistance, shall we say.

I forgot this little detail until we were in a very public, very open place with very locked bathrooms and a very urgent gastric situation.

….

Long story short,

that kid now knows how to use a chain link fence as a grip for squatting,

the fellow park-goers that viewed this situation from the other side are probably undergoing counseling,

and I’d like to personally thank whoever littered a single paper towel along the fence line sometime in the not-too-distant past. Your choice to not keep your community clean actually benefitted your community in this one specific instance.

[sidenote: the adorably hilarious soundtrack to the pic above is,”THIS DOESN’T FEEL OKAY. IS THIS OKAY? ARE THE POLICE GOING TO GET ME?? CAN YOU LISTEN FOR IF THE POLICE ARE COMING WITH HANDCUFFS?!?” ]

Unfortunately, that incident blew the ONE remaining energetic activity we could all safely do. (Literally. Literally blew through it. It’ll be a minute before we can return to the scene of THAT crime.)

Davis has one more week left of ortho-suggested “healing time”, but I’m calling it, man.

He’s probably fine. But if we don’t change it up ASAP, our family as we know it may not be.

Fatalities may ensue.

(Charges of public indecency, at the very least.)

So we’re busting out.

Wish us luck.