What I meant to say

Over a week ago, I came home from my daughter’s soccer game to find my husband just waking up from a nap. He’d been with my son at his football game while I was at the soccer game (and subsequent after-soccer activities).

My husband and I were lounging around, catching up on the day’s events when our daughter came into the room and said, “Why is Zach making that funny noise?” Then she demonstrated the sound of someone sobbing.

I went into our 13-year old son’s room to find him weeping, face red and covered by a damp blanket. His ankle hurt. One of his teammates collided with Zach’s ankle during a tackle. After limping to the van and then into the house, he took a shower and went on the computer when his ankle started to hurt more and more–so he went to his room and sobbed for two hours without notifying anyone at all about his pain level.

Immediately, our evening turned from leisurely television watching and chatting into an urgent situation, requiring us to locate an Urgent Care and find out what our insurance would cover. Only a minimum amount of parental bickering occurred which caused me to be so frazzled that I forgot my iPhone at home. Alas.

I ended up being the one to drive Zach to an Urgent Cafe in San Diego–the local Urgent Care offices that our insurance covers seemed to all have closed at 3 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon.

We drove 40 minutes to San Diego and followed the GPS-voice to the correct location. But the doors to the building were locked. I was so puzzled. Zach said, “You can call . . .” and I said, “Well, I could if I hadn’t forgotten my phone.”

It’s amazing how weird it seems to be without a cell phone. How did previous generations survive without cell phones?

After driving around the parking lot and punching futile word-combinations into the GPS, Zach said, “By the door there was this thing so you could call.” Oh. One of those things.

So I went back up to the door and punched in the numbers and a voice said he’d come and let us into the building.

It was odd.

Even though the waiting room was deserted and the hallways were empty except for a cleaning guy, our evening in the Urgent Care dragged on and on. The doctor had to call in the x-ray technician . . . by the time it was all said and done–at 10:30 p.m.–Zach was wearing a temporary cast because the doctor wasn’t sure if the ankle was fractured or not. (We found out on Monday that it was not fractured and then I hacked off the cast with old dull garden clippers.)

While in the waiting room and while waiting in the exam room, I read old magazines–a National Geographic from 2004, for instance, and lamented the fact that I’d forgotten my phone. It was so boring that by the end of the evening I was pilfering items from the exam room much to my son’s shock and horror. Latex gloves, for example, and a tongue depressor which is still in my purse. (I should not admit that.)

I did ask the doctor if I could keep the ice pack and he said yes, so the next time someone injured something in our house, I am all prepared even though I am still not sure if there is a closer Urgent Care facility located near my house that is open on weekends.

And that is what I did on the last Saturday night of October.