Day 49

When Damian was around 4 years old, the 3 of us (Dawn, Damian and I) went to the beach in South Carolina for a long weekend. I believe the place was called Ocean Isle. The first night we were there, we went out to dinner. The restaurant was busy enough that we had to wait about 30 to 40 minutes before we got seated. While we waited for our table, we each had something to drink. Non-alcoholic for Damian and I, probably wine for Dawn. 

Not long after we sat down and had placed our dinner order, Damian said that he had to go the bathroom. Dawn looked at me and said, “Your turn”. 

“No problem.” I thought, “I got this”. And off we went. 

When we got into the mens room, the water closet was occupied but the urinal was available. The only problem was that it was high enough off the ground that Damian was not going to be able to reach it without assistance. Fortunately, there was a step stool under the sink which I grabbed and placed in front of the urinal. As I turned to help Damian, he blew past me in a leap towards the front of the stool and the salvation of a sanctioned place to pee. Being 4 he had, of course, waited until his bladder was at defcon 1 before telling us he had to pee so now it was an all out emergency - the pee was coming now whether we liked it or not hence the urgency in Damian’s leap. 

Being 4 years old also explains Damian’s lack of understanding of basic physics. Like how a stool can tip over if enough weight is applied to the edge rather than the center. Which is exactly what happened when Damian’s feet made contact with the stool. It tipped forward, away from the urinal, along with his legs and feet, while his torso and head shot forward and down into a classic face plant position. And face plant he did. Right into the edge of urinal. He hit it with his mouth with shocking force snapping his head back in a whiplash motion. The sound of the impact - face to porcelain - was like a gun going off. (Gives me shivers just thinking about it now, all these years later.)

As his body slid to the floor I could see the scream coming like the transition point for a high-octane dragster between the last yellow light on the tree and the green light. In the span of a few milliseconds the bathroom went from serene to an explosion of wailing. This all happened very quickly but I watched it all unfold like it was recorded in super slow motion. Like the video of a bullet piercing a child’s balloon. I think the screaming brought me back to real time. That and the pee. 

Remember what started all of this - Damian had to pee. Now. And he was. Lying prone on the dirty floor of a restaurant bathroom in the height of summer tourist season. Peeing and wailing. And also bleeding. There was a lot of blood but all I could think to do in the moment was to pick him up by his armpits and hold him over the urinal while he finished his first order of business. The first lesson of field triage is to identify the most critical need and address it first. Minimizing the amount of pee that he was going to soak up seemed like a great place to start. 

After he was done and I’d hoisted up his underpants and (more-damp-than-I’d-like) shorts, it was time to address the second tier problem: the blood streaming from his face. As I wet some paper towel and tried to staunch the bleeding, I was trying to gauge how bad it was. Did he break his jaw? Did he break any teeth. My initial assessment was no to both. But he did have a cut on his face near his mouth. A later examination would reveal that he hit his face so hard that one of his teeth actually punched a hole through the skin of  his mouth. From inside to outside. The hole that I saw on the outside was the exit wound. How he did that without breaking his tooth (or any teeth) remains a mystery. 

It took another 5 to 10 minutes to get the bleeding under control and to get Damian to calm down. At this point, I carried him out of the bathroom and back to our table. Just in time for our food to be delivered. As I got close to the table, Dawn sees me and says “What took you so long? I was getting worried.” Having heard Dawn’s voice, Damian, who up to this point had his back to her since I was carrying him, whipped around and threw his arm out in the universal sign for, “Dad just tried to kill me. Save me, mom.” It was also at this point that Dawn, having seen Damian’s face for the first time since “the fall”, gasped. (She may have also muttered “holy shit” or something along those lines. It’s all a bit hazy.) Needless to say, they both realized they needed each other so Damian transferred from my arms to hers and then the questions started flowing. “What the hell happened?” “And why is he all wet?”

My answer: “It’s a long story but you are going to want to wash your hands soon. We should be probably get the food put into to-go boxes so we can head back to the condo. Damian is going to need Tylenol…and maybe an X-ray.” I’m pretty sure that was met with some icy stares but all I could think to say was, “I’ll explain everything in the car. We just need to go.”

Skipping ahead a few minutes, we were back in the car headed to the condo with our carry out dinners and our bruised, battered and pee-soaked toddler who was now securely strapped into his car seat. As we were leaving the parking lot, Damian asked, “Did I hit the potty with my face?”

In the spirit of Abe Lincoln, I replied with the truth: “Yes you did, son” 

A few moments of contemplation, then: “Does that mean I got pee on my face.” 

More truth: “Yes…but let’s not worry about that right now.”

His final thought on the subject: “Gross.”

All I could do was agree. “Yep.”

The after action report on this incident was that Damian was a little worse for wear but no serious damage had been done - no fractures or broken teeth. We did have to put all of his clothes (and some of mine) into a garbage bag for the trip home but everything washed up ok. 

The best part of the whole ordeal was that I got a cool story I could tell Damian’s friends. About the time he fell face first into a dirty toilet and peed on himself. He hated (loved) when I would tell it.

Love you, Kiddo.