Famous Last Words...

You know those words, the ones that doom you to an eternal life of misery and doom (no, it's not 'I Do'). It's those phrases like, "Wow, I can't believe you didn't break that yet," or "I can't believe how good you're being!" Yeah. You know it.

This weekend, K-man had a friend sleep over. Little one had the neighbor child over to play. The friend's dad called, and I happily said, "Yes, they're doing great. Playing well together, though I suspect with as much as they're laughing, they're probably doing something inappropriate. But no one has come in bloody yet..."

Yes, those are the famous last words.

A few moments later, the neighbor child comes in, complaining of bleeding from a lost tooth. I am on the phone with MIL and internally cringing. I HATE LOST TEETH. I hate that they wiggle, that they bleed and get all gooky... The toothfairy is one unlucky lady as far as I'm concerned. Teeth are GROSS. So I tell her to wait a moment, hang up and turn to discover one heck of a bloody child.

"That's from a lost TOOTH?" I shriek, and run to get wet papertowels. If there's anything I hate more than loose teeth it's BLOOD. And this somehow involved blood and teeth, though I couldn't see any missing tooth. "Where's the tooth?" I ask as I hand her wet papertowels.

"I don't know."

"So how did this happen?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?" I hand her more towels an arm's length away, and cautiously inspect her teeth from a distance. "I don't see any missing teeth. Are you sure you lost a tooth?"

"I think so."

I look again. "I don't see anything missing." I breathe huge sigh. "I think you bit your lip." The bottom lip is bloody. Gross, but not involving teeth. This is getting better. However, no one knows how it happened. I shake my head--kids are strange.

So after a bit, the blood stops, she goes outside, the kids go to collect fruit roll-ups from grandma's. The neighbor child goes home afterward. Her mother calls 30 seconds after, wanting to know why the poor thing has TWO BROKEN TEETH.

After much screaming and yelling on my part, I finally discover the truth. The neighbor girl tossed a rock at the friend, the friend threw one back and hit her in the face with it. And the neighbor child didn't want to tell me because she would get in trouble for throwing the rock to begin with. My children didn't throw the rocks, but they didn't come in and tell, which is just as bad. I apologize profusely, ground the remaining children (they wanted to ride dirt bikes) and call MIL to update her on the tooth saga. And called the friend's dad to tell him I was wrong, and there was blood involved after all.

The neighbor child ended up with bond-o or whatever on the teeth. I know I didn't see broken teeth when I examined her (despite my cringing and disgust at the blood, I did look carefully. Honest.) We think the rock cracked the teeth, and the fruit roll-ups yanked them out. In any case, 4 children will hopefully never throw rocks again, and I'll never say anything that just might backfire and end up with blood and teeth and icky things.