Yesterday, I was cooking dinner and my 7-year-old (who is a very bright boy, by the way) started wailing like I've never heard him wail before. I ran to find him lying on the floor holding his eye. "What happened?!" I demanded over and over as he screamed. "I shot myself in the eye with a dart gun!" he answered. Um, what? Moms are usually the ones privy to their kids most WTF moments, but even I couldn't see this particular scenario coming.
OK, so I will level with you: I've been shot with this particular dart gun. I won't go into the details (this is about my son and his questionable decisions, people!), but I can tell you that it hurts... from a distance. I can only imagine what shooting yourself in the eye with that very same gun feels like. Thankfully, my son did eventually calm down long enough for me to check for blood (there was none), to see if he could see out of his injured eye (he could), set him up with an ice pack, and get some more information.
When I asked him how he shot himself in his eye, my son said that he wanted to see "how fast it would come out." When I asked him if he did, in fact, shoot himself on purpose, he said, nonchalantly, "Yeah." All I could do was stare at my sweet, sniffling son in absolute silence. Then, of course, I just had to ask why in the world he would think shooting himself in the eye would be a good idea. Now please remember, the kid is actually very smart. But his response? "It was a bad idea. I should have held it farther away from me so I would have had time to dodge it."
And that's when I had to try very, very hard to keep myself from laughing.
My son is fine, just FYI. Within a few minutes he stopped crying, and within an hour the redness around his eye had gone away. All's well that ends well but, seriously dude... That's where you think this plan fell apart? For real? Your inability to dodge the dart? Not, you know, the part where you shot yourself in the eye on purpose? What the actual eff?
Thankfully, the following moms know that when it comes to inexplicably weird kid behavior, we're all in this together.
Rachel
"I told my 3-year-old son not to draw on the walls with his markers and... he didn't."
Helen
"My daughter thought she wanted bangs. So she cut her hair. She thought bangs went all around her head. We ended up fixing it with a pixie cut!"
Lindsay
"When I walked into the bathroom she was clothed, in a completely different room, and the glitter was on the top shelf of the closet. Approximately 45 seconds later I found this."
Heather
"My daughter came into the kitchen, she kept taking bits of food, and I thought she was snacking. Turns out she was surrounding the perimeter of the house with snacks. Why? Because living in the country means sometimes we get field mice in and need to set traps. She’s hoping they’ll eat the outside snacks and not come in and die."
Maggie
"Her excuse was she thought she looked pretty."
Jessica
"We were at a restaurant and my 2.5-year-old got into the claw machine and was standing up in there. We took no pictures because we thought we were going to have to call 911. My husband was somehow able to guide him back out. He is almost 11 and we still harass him about it. For years he would still try to climb in machines. He got his arm stuck in a snack machine at my work."
Marybeth
"My oldest. I left her alone in a room with a eyeshadow present for about five minutes."
Kelsey
"We’ve told my 4-year-old that the little white balls in potting soil are poison. We’ve told him not to touch anything that is poison. I walk in the house to get a jug of water to water the plants, as soon as I’m about 10 feet away I hear screaming. He thought it’d be a good idea to pick up the 'poison ball' and squeeze. It shot into his eye. One call to poison control and one flushed eye later, I bet he won’t do that again."
Betsy
"I feel like I should start out by saying that my husband has always worked nights and weekends and I have always done a good majority on the parenting and activities on my own and I am no stranger to taking three kids out in public. I now have two kids in school and birthday parties seem to come every weekend now. Most know that if one kids gets invited to a party, they get all [my] boys. This party happened to be at a local bowling alley/arcade and was rather exhausting to begin with. (22 kids were attending.)
My three boys (6, 4, and 2) were all trying to roll bowling balls down at the same time. I'm trying to keep them in the same vicinity and get them to take turns, keep their heads out of the ball return (because apparently its pretty cool get catch a bowling ball to the face), and keep them from completely running off. Each kid also got a $5 card good in the arcade, so when it was time to enter the arcade I was pretty psyched! It was a closed off area, no bowling balls, and the 2-year-old was pretty content on driving the cars without actually putting any money in!
If you've ever been to an arcade with kids, you'd know that $15 between three kids doesn't go very far and, inevitably, you'll have to get more money. So I walked away to get money put back on their arcade card, leaving my 2-year-old driving his car. I come back about a minute and he is nowhere to be seen! Where in the f*ck could he have possible have gone?! I walk around to see if he had followed me to the counter, back to the games, locate my other two and no one has seen him. After what seemed like a lifetime, a couple of people are pointing to the skee-ball game.
"Is he yours?"
For the love of god... he had climbed inside. Inside. ... I had my oldest climb up and pull him out by his ankles, but not before taking his picture. If you ever want to feel better about your parenting, or think that your children are wild, come to my house. You'll walk away feeling better about your chaos."
Trish
"When she was 4, my child’s teacher's assistant told me that she complimented him on his eyes. 'I like your eyes! I would love to wear them on a necklace!' She genuinely meant it as a compliment."
"Ilaria"
"When my oldest son was just about 4 he was going to the bathroom. After a bit, my husband went to check on him and he had covered himself in lotion. When asked what he was thinking, he said he wanted his hair shiny."
Liz
"We were on our way out to a Bruins playoff game and we’re informed by our 10-year-old (oldest of three boys) son that he was playing manhunt in the woods with his friends (we have close to 15 similar aged boys in our neighborhood) and he couldn’t 'hold it.' So he continued to use his Easter basket as a toilet and took a massive dump in the woods. So the playoff night was almost canceled due to angry parents. But we took a deep breath and grounded him to our yard for the next two weeks."
Another Lindsay
"When my son was about 4.5, he cheerfully announced, 'Three more days until the sun crashes into the Earth!' His cheerfully delivery was very disconcerting. My husband and I asked, 'What?!' But he just said, 'Nothing!'"
Hannah
"My son got bored at nap time, so he hid behind the bookcase and colored his face, arms, and legs red with a marker. He even got his eyelids. To this day he's not allowed to have markers at nap."
"Annette"
"When my son was 3 we took him to the doctor for a cough. And when she walked in he proceeded to drop trou excitedly. We were like, 'What are you doing?!' And he said, 'You said only you and Dr. R are allowed to see my penis.' We had told him that months earlier to explain about private parts. Apparently he was waiting for his opportunity... to show off?"
