New at eleven: Signs that your parents may not love you after all

Newscasters convinced my son that he was suffering from a staph infection. Oh, and that he was going to die. Immediately. Unless he was seen and treated by a qualified physician. Perhaps even an unqualified one. And the fact that I would not take him to see any physician whatsoever for said staph infection was evidence that I did not love him.

So really, newscasters had convinced my son that I am a horrible excuse for a parent.

This part is nothing new.

The kid complained Monday night that he had a mildly sore throat and he had a bit of a sniffle. I suspected this was a ruse to get out of going to school, but I told him he probably had a cold and that he should drink plenty of water and go to bed early, probably take a nap when he got home from school the next day. Tuesday night when I got home from work, he had discovered (invented) a new set of symptoms to support his theory that he would need to be hospitalized at any moment. These symptoms included but were not limited to the following:

-A tender spot on his head, suspiciously near the base of the hairs he twists into knots when nervous and/or bored.

-A protrusion beneath the backside of one of his toes. He claims to have stepped on a piece of glass when he was nine and is certain the glass is still in his toe. I felt the toe and informed him that said “protrusion” was in fact a bone. He was unconvinced.

-A burning fever. This proved to be just plain false. When confronted with his actual body temperature, he rebutted that a lack of fever did not mean he wasn’t sick.

-A red spot behind his ear. I asked what had prompted him to look there, since in the nearly fifteen years he has been a conscious being, he has failed to notice this birthmark previously.

But yesterday, knowing that I should never take my child's health too lightly, I took him to Patient’s First (love these guys, by the way) where, for a measly twenty-five dollar co-pay, my son was diagnosed with an upper respiratory virus. In other words, he basically has a cold. He was sent home to drink plenty of fluids and get some rest. And to stop rubbing that bone in his toe.