Fabricated Stories

In light of Master Five’s “sickie” stunt he pulled a couple of weeks ago, in The Boy That Cried Wolf – style, I was hesitant to believe him when he said he felt ill.

While the other two were chirpily eating their breakfast, he uncharacteristically hadn’t emerged from his room.

After a while I went down to investigate. There I found him rolling round on his bed looking decidedly pale before uttering the words every working parent probably dreads to hear:

“Mummy, I feel sick.”

I saw my whole day plummet before me.

But I couldn’t ask for any more time off so my first instinct was to Pamol him up and send him along regardless. But then he turned green and dry-wretched. I lunged for a bucket and something the likes of nothing I’d seen before landed in it.

Ok, he was sick.

Something like this, which completely throws your day, calls for quick action, leaving little time for playing the sympathetic nurse and, feeling guilty about this, I set about changing my plans.

Once again, my understanding boss came to the fore, allowing me to work from home. Clearly I hadn’t been touching wood when I’d previously proudly boasted that my kids never get sick!

I still needed to keep my osteopath appointment so Master Five and his sick bowl got dragged into town for that. Luckily this was uneventful on the vomiting front and he slept for most of the day.

So while that time, he was clearly telling the truth, in another incident later that day, I realised I’d had the wool pulled over my eyes.

Master Seven had come home from school the previous day and calmly mentioned that a sky diver had landed on his friend’s roof behind the airport.

“Are you sure?” I asked, to which he nodded vehemently. “Well that would make a good story,” said the journalist in me. “You tell him tomorrow your mum wants to write a story about that.”

As it happened, I bumped into his mum up at the school. “So what’s this about a parachuter landing on your roof?” I enquired.

She raised an eyebrow.

I explained the story and she rolled her eyes and began laughing.

“Ah, no, no parachuter landed on our roof that I know about – they’re always dropping from the sky, but none have landed on our roof.”

We had a chuckle about our boys’ vivid imaginations and I asked a sheepish-looking  Master Seven on the way home who’d made up the story.

“Well he just told me that was what happened,” he mumbled.

You’ve gotta love kids’ imaginations and mine must still be such that I get taken for a ride every time.