Patrick Corcoran

Last night’s middle-of-the-night drama was a doozy. Susanna woke me up because Connor was crying, and I went into his room to check up on him. It was dark, and I whispered. “What’s wrong?”

“I barfed,” he cried.

I told him to cover his eyes, and I turned on the light. The poor little guy had vomit on his face and all over his pillow and bedding. There was evidence of peas from his dinner and even pinto beans from his lunch yesterday.

Susanna and I cleaned it all up. She wiped him down with a warm, wet towel while I was spraying the solid stuff off into the kitchen sink and putting a bundle together for a 2am load of laundry. By the time I got back from the laundry room downstairs he was already back asleep on his fresh bedding.

He woke up one more time needing to vomit. He threw up everything until there was nothing left. I held him as he hurled into the toilet. It was impossible not to feel his pain.

That seemed to be the end of it. After spending 45 minutes or so in our bed for comfort, he was carried back into his room by Susanna. This morning he claimed not to remember any of it, but there was a little glimmer of a fib in his eye as he said it.

There is really nothing in life which compares to parenting when it comes to being put into completely unforeseen situations. Kids are magnificent little engines of entropy.

For some reason, Connor and I got onto the subject of Buzkashi. (These are risks when you’re trolling photography web sites with a 4-year-old in tow.)

Buzkashi… what to say? Perhaps the only sport whose rules can be conveyed in a single sentence:

Drag the headless carcass of a goat to your team’s goal before the other team does likewise, and don’t break any laws doing it.

Connor became interested in this when I told him it was dangerous. How to explain? It’s dangerous because the competitive spirit of humanity can only somewhat barely be constrained by rules and laws? Because the will to win is stronger than the instinct to avoid hurting others? Because the real golden rule is “me first”?

But as with everything else, all you have to do to change the subject at his age is change the subject. I pulled up a photo of one insect battling another, and all was well.

Please tell me you have kids and weird situations happen to you too….