Don't Cry Wookie

Have you ever cried wolf? My kids do it all the time. Several times my youngest has come running to me shouting, "M. needs you! Come quick! It’s an emergency!" When he first started doing this, I would leap after him only to find that my middle child simply needed help putting his catapult together, or some other equally non-emergency type of thing. Usually, he just wants an extra hand. It’s not like he’s lost a hand himself. He wants my attention, doesn’t want to make the effort to come get me himself, so he tells his little brother to tell mom that it’s an emergency. This is his variation on the crying wolf theme.

But this particular son doesn’t just cry wolf…he cries Wookie.

The other day my youngest child came running upstairs to tell me that his brother needed me…he was hurt. I was gathering up clothes to bring down to do the laundry and I said, "Just a minute." Sounds callous, but when you have kids, you quickly learn what is serious and what is not. I could hear some complaints coming from the victim but no major screeches signaling serious pain. Since my kids can make a paper cut sound like they’ve just been scalped, I figured he wasn’t too badly hurt this time. So, I wasn’t in a big hurry, but I also wasn’t going too slowly, either. Just in case…

Anyhoo, my youngest runs downstairs to his brother to deliver my message. I’m not far behind him, however, and I arrive in the kitchen to hear him say, "Mom says just a minute." In response, my five-year-old roars, "Not just a minute, NOOOOWWW!" sounding just like a Wookie in distress. That’s what he does when he’s hurt or mad. He howls, and he does it well.

It turns out that he had good reason to bellow. He’d gotten his foot stuck between the slats in his chair. He wasn’t hurt, but he was good and scared and panicking a bit because he couldn’t get his foot back out. Now if I was a really cruel parent, I would’ve fetched the video camera to record the whole event so I could send it in to AFHV to win me some money. Okay, maybe I tried, but the battery was too low (totally kidding here so don’t go calling children’s services on me). With a little bit of maneuvering on my part and lots of complaining about how it hurt on his part, we saved his foot…and the chair. No saws necessary.

And this is why I never get anything done…RRRRUUUUHHHHHWWWWW!