As I was saying...

The secretary at my elementary school stopped by my office this morning (down the hall from hers) to apologize for being so needy yesterday while they were dealing with asthma medication issues. I said no problem, and we started talking about how I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off lately. As though on cue, a kid walked in: the tip of a pencil was stuck in his ear. Way in. The little kindergartener kept trying to stick his fingers in to take it out, so while the secretary tried to control the wild child I started dialing for a parent. I didn't have any luck, so I got a pair of tweezers and pulled the thing out. It was like a magic trick, it was so long, except instead of a colorful scarf, it was a 3/4" piece of a thick pencil covered in wax. I finally got in touch with a parent, and his live-in grandma came to pick him up. That's when I heard the background: a family in turmoil, he is bipolar (is that possible as a 5 year old?), and there is a clot of some sort in his ear. He'd spent two hours at the doctor's office yesterday with them trying to flush out his ear without success (clearly, given the amount of wax that came out with the pencil tip), and that's why he had his pencil in his ear this morning: he was trying to clean out the "rock" in there.

Kids: don't stick things in holes in your body. Not your ear, not your nose, not anywhere.