My son Charlie came home the other night with a black eye and a fat lip after a game fo basketball. He and his friends play it rough. Earlier this year, when he still had his own place, he came over and asked me to go to the hospital with him. He'd run into a wall trying to keep a ball from going out of bounds and got a gash above his eye. He had felt dizzy and his arm hurt.

I'd just bought a new tv stand that I was trying to put together; I'd waited all the day for the chance to do it.

"Come here," I said.

Charlie leaned over and I looked at it. After 7 children and having gone through chicken pox and hernias and car accidentsand other assorted, I had a fairly workable medical knowledge. "You can go to the hospital and they'll probably give you stitches. Or you don't and it'll heal itself, you'll just have a more noticeable scar. Take some aspirin but don't go to sleep; you don't want a concussion," I said, before going back to the tv stand instructions.

"That's all? You're not going with me?"

I explained to my son that he didn't have insurance and that the public hospital had been sold shortly after a private hospital came to town and I wasn't sure if they still had to see you if you went to the emergency room.

"Can't you just come with me to see? Mooooooooooooooom."

I sighed and set the instructions and the shelf aside.

In the car, Charlie turned the key in the ignition and said, "You can't move. I'm a Mama's boy. What am I going to do without you?"


Hmmmm-- grow up?