“all i did was sneeze”

A couple of weeks ago, Hybrid 2 stayed home from school one day because he had a bad cough and was up all night. He was so exhausted the next day, we kept him home.

Last Monday, the Hybrid stayed home because he caught his younger brother’s cough and was up all night himself.

The Hybrid, however, unlike his brother, has kept the cough for the week. Two nights ago, besides having the cough, he woke up in the middle of the night with an earache and a fever, so I took him to urgent care yesterday morning.

I won’t go into what happens in a doctor’s office waiting room. We’ve all been through that hell so I skip any details about that for now. It took about an hour before we were called, and long story short, not only does he have a form of bronchitis, he has a mild ear infection. And because of the fever, the doctor said the Hybrid should not go to school today. Which means I have to stay home to take care of him while his brother is in school and his mother is out and about.

Before my wife left to take Hybrid 2 to school, the three of us were having breakfast in the kitchen. The Hybrid was in the living room watching tv when he called out to us. Not exactly sure what he said, I get up to go check on him.

He was standing, hunched over, with the longest y-shaped snot I have ever seen hanging out of both his nostrils bouncing up and down like some bungee jumper hanging from a bridge.

I watched this…thing…bounce up and down for a good second or two.

“All I did was sneeze,” he said.

At that I ran into the kitchen to get a tissue or something to wipe it away. It took more than a couple of tags/wipes to pull the whole thing away from his nose.

I seriously debated to myself whether or not to take a picture. Not only as proof of how long this snot was, but because he looked so confused about how it all happened. I didn’t take the picture, figuring that wiping it away so that it didn’t fall onto the floor was the bigger priority.

And priorities matter.