When life gives you suppositories

In this post, I am participating in the Silicon Valley Moms Blog Book Club.  We read "See Mom Run" subtitled "Side-Splitting Essays from the World's Most Harried Moms" by Beth Feldman.  In response, we are coming up with our own side-splitting stories.  This story was originally posted on my now-retired Vox blog in July of 2008.  Try as I might to come up with a new side-splitting story, this one is the funniest in my toolbox -- even funnier now, as I have a pre-pubescent daughter who would be extra-embarrassed if this happened in front of her today!  Here's the tale:

At the pool this afternoon, Dash saw a lifeguard wearing blue latex gloves to pick up trash. 

He exclaimed, at the top of his lungs, "MAMA, WHO NEEDS BUTT MEDI?" 

I tried to play it off, but the naive 16 year-old lifeguard sensed that he was being addressed, and he approached.  "What did he say?" the lifeguard asked.

"Trust me, you don't want to know," was my quiet response.

Apparently, Dash didn't want his mother to speak for him.  He pointed at the lifeguard's hands and rephrased, "Why do you have to give somebody butt medi at the pool?"

Again, the lifeguard asked, "What did he say?"

So I explained, "When Dash gets a fever, we give him suppositories to control the fever. He associates those gloves with the administration of the suppository."

Oh, my, but the lifeguard didn't get it.  "What's a suppository?" the sweet, naive, soon to be red-faced boy asked.

"Medicine inserted in the..." I began.

"BUTT MEDI!" Dash interrupted.

"Ohhhhhh," the guard muttered as he turned red and resumed his trash duty.  I was going to make some joke about being raised in West-by-God-Virginia and/or the movie Deliverance, but all I could manage through my giggles was the banjo riff... duh duh dah dah dah dah dah dah...

*****

Though the Silicon Valley Moms Blog book club does not do book reviews, I always add a note regarding whether or not this is a book I'd recommend.  In this case, I think "See Mom Run" is a fun mom-to-mom gift, or even a good gift for a new mom; I'll be passing it along to a friend who's pregnant with baby #1.  The essays aren't as side-splitting as I'd hoped, but they're amusing anecdotes worth a quick read -- as are many of the blogs from which the contributors came. Look 'em up!

Disclosure: I received a copy of the book for free for the purposes of this book club discussion.