Parental Karma

Em's new haircut. (One of my eyes droops a little like that, too.)

So it turns out that my daughter Em is a lot like me.

Yesterday she was continuously complaining about an "owie" on her foot. After looking at it for approximately 0.002 seconds (before she snatched it away), I determined she had a splinter in her foot. It wasn't deep or infected, and would probably take less than 30 seconds to remove.

Right.

Em is really super sensitive to pain. (That's a delicate way of saying she's a big baby sometimes.) She never wears bandaids, because she can't abide me getting close enough to the "ouch" to put one on.

I told her that she could let me pull the splinter out, or she could stop whining about it. One of those two things would have to happen, however, because the complaining was making me want to poke my eardrums out. After another half-hour of dramatics, I pinned her down--at one point literally sitting on her--and pulled the splinter.

She didn't even feel it. I, however, felt every kick and punch she threw at me during the process.

Which leads me to an apology to my parents. I have a distinct memory of a similar event--a splinter in the foot, a girl determined to not let those tweezers anywhere near her, a dad pinning her down, a mom pulling the splinter out, and then the sheepish apology. It, too, didn't even hurt.

Sorry, Mema and Daddy. I guess what goes around comes around.