It's all in your head

I was peacefully painting at the dining room table when a shriek from outside told me that Genevieve was once again calmly handling her self inflicted injuries. Now, this is the child that Jeremy offered to throw a party for if she would go an entire week without hurting herself to the point of leaving obvious wounds. This includes both scabbing and bruising. This is a child that I'm half afraid to take out in public lest someone call family services on me for my obvious abuse of her. She is the single greatest consumer of bandaids in our household, by a lot. Her day care repeatedly sends home accident reports in duplicate for me to sign and send back as if it's such a unique occurrence that a single copy of the form would be insufficient to detail it.

Unfortunately, not only does she inflict bodily harm on herself with alarming frequency, but she's never been one to downplay these incidents. Screaming bloody murder as if one's fingers have been removed by a hacksaw is certainly not an overreaction for a splinter.

So perhaps I can be forgiven for my complacency at the gasping sobs as Genevieve made her way inside while I continued to paint calmly. When she sputtered out "I fell!" I noticed that her knee was actually bleeding quite a bit. Knowing these things really can hurt I was all sympathy as I cleaned up the knee and covered it with a bandaid. I examined the palms of her hands carefully. They were red, but no scratches, so I cleaned them, kissed them and sent her on her way.

Well, that wasn't going to cut it. Sure, the knee was fine, but the hands were grossly neglected and the screams were unabated. I checked once again to make sure there were no open wounds with bone shards poking out that I had somehow missed in my negligence. My sympathy was evaporating fast. "What do you want me to do?" I asked, through gritted teeth. "MY HAAANDS HUUUURRRT!!!" she suggested reasonably, shattering several windows. "Fine," I said, "you want some medicine?" She nodded.

The bathroom where most of the medicine is kept was occupied, but I didn't really care. I don't have any topical painkiller unless you count the sunburn ointment which was nowhere to be found. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find that didn't seem poisonous, which was Vick's vapor rub. I made a production of wiping a thin layer on the palms of her hands, and the crying ceased immediately. The potent odor proved... something or another. "They feel better," she informed me. "They smell better," I said.