Tag Archives: stories

May 19, 2013 · 6:45 pm

The “How to be a Super-Hero” Party

130510 - The Batman

Like most boys his age, Big Brother loves super-heroes. He’s not too fussy about which ones, although Spiderman and Batman are probably his favourites. So his answer shouldn’t have come as a shock to me when, a few months ago, I asked the fateful question: “Shall we have a birthday party for you this year?”

“A super-hero party!” Big Brother said, with the type of enthusiasm usually reserved for… well, super-hero parties, I suppose.

“Sure,” I said, in that Mummy-tone way that actually means: “I’m not sure, actually. But it’s a few months away. And maybe you’ll change your mind between now and then.”

But he didn’t. So, two weeks before his birthday, I had to actually admit to myself that it was going to happen. We were going to have a super-hero party for him and his school friends.

The trouble is, I suck at children’s parties. I’m no good at running party games (as I discovered a year ago, when Big Brother turned five). And the idea of a group of five and six-year-old boys running pell-mell around the house without direction or parental control fills me with the kind of dread usually reserved for… well, children’s parties.

But do you what I don’t suck at?

Storytelling.

So the challenge was: How do I turn Big Brother’s 6th birthday from a super-hero party into a super-hero story?

As it turns out, it was easier than it sounds.

We had the birthday party in a local park on a Sunday morning a couple of weeks ago. (Several hours after Big Brother woke me up by excitedly yelling, “Mummy! It’s my birthday! And I’m six years old!!) Four of Big Brother’s school friends were there, along with their parents and three little sisters.

“Do you like super-heroes?” I asked the children. “And would you like to be a super-hero?”

With two resounding answers of Yes!, we started the day’s activities.

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All the children sat down, and I gave them each a plain white t-shirt and some fabric markers to design their own super-hero costume. When that was done, they moved to the next table to colour in their own super-hero mask.

The children loved it. So did the parents — some of whom spent more time designing the costumes than their children did. (If I did this again, I’d definitely have adult-sized shirts on hand as well!)

We had a Neo-Flash, a Neo-Batman, a Neo-Superman, Z-Man, and the Golden Arm of Justice. (Also a couple of Princesses and Fairy Queens.) When the children were dressed in their costumes, they super-heroed around for a while until everyone was done. And then we moved on to the next part of the party.

“Do you like stories?” I asked.

Another resounding Yes!

So I gathered the children together, and we sat down in a circle on the grass for a story.

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“This is the story of Rocky the Rabbit,” I began. “Rocky the Rabbit was a very special rabbit. He wasn’t a flesh and blood rabbit living in a field. No, he was something much better. He was a money-box rabbit living in a playroom. And at night, when all the children had gone to bed and the toys came out to have their own adventures, Rocky the Rabbit dreamed of being a super-hero.”

And then I told them the story of Rocky the Rabbit — a story I wrote for the occasion.

Rocky the Rabbit wanted to be a super-hero, but he didn’t have any super-powers. But during the course of the story, he rushed to try to help everyone who needed him. And at the end of the story the toys all gathered together to throw a party of Rocky.

“But I’m not a super-hero,” Rocky said. “I’m not super-fast, and I’m not super-strong, and I can’t even fly.”

“You may not be super-fast,” said the toys. “And you may not be super-strong. And you certainly can’t fly. But when you heard someone calling for help, you hop-hop-hopped over as fast as you could, and you found a way to help them. And that’s what makes a real super-hero.”

And then the toys presented Rocky the Rabbit with his very own shiny cape. And from then on, every night after the children had gone to sleep, Rocky the Rabbit would put on his cape and hop-hop-hop around the playroom, looking for people to help. Because he really was a super-hero.

The children loved it.

And when the story was done, I presented each of the children with their very own shiny cape. We attached them to the back of the super-hero shirts, and off they flew to do super-heroic things.

Soon after, we gathered the children together so Big Brother could open his presents. And then we had cake.

130505 Or cakes. With an s.

For some reason, I decided on the spur of the moment that cupcakes would be a better idea than a large cake.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to decorate 30 cupcakes?

A long time.

But the children loved them, and that’s the important part. In fact, the hard part was getting the children to leave them alone until after the candles had been blown out and the birthday song sung. Then they attacked the cupcakes with gusto, everyone grabbing the symbol of their favourite super-hero.

So I count the decorating as time well spent.

After cake had been consumed, it was almost time to wrap up the story party. So I called all the children over and told them we had a little present for each of them to say thank you for coming to Big Brother’s birthday.

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Once the children had all lined up, excited faces and hands outstretched, I tried to open the box of goodies.

But it wouldn’t budge.

“Oh no,” I said. “It seems to be stuck.”

I tried again to no avail. “Wait. There’s a letter here.”

The children watched with wide eyes as I read it out.

Dear super-heroes,
Ha ha ha. I have locked your presents away in this box and sealed them in there with my magic power ring. I’ve hidden all the other magic power rings in the world, so now you will never get your presents. Ha ha ha.
Your sincerely,
Super-villain X.

“Oh no!” I cried. “What will we do?!”

The littlest super-heroes got it straight away. “We have to find the magic power rings!”

And off they went, running as though their presents lives depended on it. They searched high and low, around trees and benches and fences. And before long, they all had at least one magic power ring to their name. (Some had as many as six. Trust me, you can’t have too many magic power rings.)

When the children were all back, I got them to all line up. “Maybe if we all point out magic power rings at the box and say the magic words really, really loudly… Does anyone know any magic words?”

“Abracadabra!”

“Monkeys!”

“Please!” (Bless. Not my child, but he had the best magic word of them all.)

We worked out a combination of magic words, and then all the children pointed their rings at the box and yelled and –

130505 - Power Rings– it worked!

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The box opened.

And I gave everyone their party favour: a real Rocky the Rabbit money-box.

Complete with cape.

The children flew their Rocky the Rabbits around for a while, and then it was time for everyone to go home.

It was a great morning, and everyone enjoyed themselves.

As everyone was leaving, one of the parents said to me, “This was great. I can’t wait to see what you do next year!”

Right. Next year.

You mean children have more than one birthday?!

What have I gotten myself into…

Have you had any particularly good (or bad) children’s birthday party experiences?

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March 28, 2013 · 7:38 pm

Do You Believe in Dragons?

Dragon 1

“Mummy, are dragons real?”

Big Brother is five years old. Nearly six. He loves stories of knights and dragons. He wants to be a superhero when he grows up so he can protect people.

“Are they extinct?” he asks.

I don’t know how to answer.

I feel like I’m standing on a tightrope, my position precariously balanced between two core beliefs.

I believe in honesty always.

But I also believe in fairies and dragons and elves.

Salvatore quote

So I stand, unsure how to cross the gaping chasm between truth and imagination in a way that doesn’t disrespect my son’s question.

I must delve into my own beliefs. I question them; turn them over and over in my mind; put them to the test.

(This is one of the great wonders of parenthood — the way our children push us to examine our own feelings and become better, stronger people.)

I do believe in dragons.

But do I believe dragons are out there, ready to fly forth from their hiding places at any moment and raze our cities to the ground?

Dragon 2

No.

Probably not.

It’s fairly unlikely.

Do I believe that was true once-upon-a-time?

Yes.

Scientists tell us that dragons were never real, but scientists aren’t always right.

As a friend of mine recently blogged, not finding something doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t there. And scientists learn new things every day.

The Brontosaurus never existed. Dinosaurs may not have been cold-blooded reptiles. New living species of plants and animals are discovered every day. Who’s to say what will be discovered in the future?

Maybe we’ll find dragon fossils.

Maybe we’ll find dragons.

But even if we don’t…

I’ll still believe in dragons.

I stand on that precipice while my son watches me expectantly, secure in the knowledge that his mother knows everything. Not yet old enough to understand how much I don’t know.

Dragon 3

So I look him in the eye and I say…

Nothing for a second. Instead, I gather my thoughts.

Then I cross that chasm of doubt, the chasm spanning untruth and disbelief. And I do it one slow step at a time.

“No one has claimed they’ve seen a dragon in a very long time,” I say.

“In fact, it’s been so long, most people don’t think dragons were ever really real. Some people think dragons are just stories. Some people think dragons are still alive but they’re very good at hiding. And some people think dragons are extinct.”

My beautiful son looks up at me, and his lips curl into a smile.

“I knew it,” he says. Then he skips off to play.

A minute later, I hear him telling himself a story about dragons and I smile.

I believe

Do you believe in dragons?

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November 13, 2012 · 10:44 pm

Wherein I Retain My Sanity (At the Cost of a Little Bit of Magic)

Big Brother is five and a half years old. But he doesn’t talk the way I imagine a five and a half year old boy should talk. Take the exchange we had yesterday morning, for example:

Me: Please eat your cereal properly
BB: I’d prefer to eat it like this
Me: You may eat your cereal properly, please. Drinking the milk from the bowl is impolite
BB: (thinks for a minute) No, I think you’re incorrect.

Seriously, is that the way most five year olds converse? Please tell me that’s completely normal.

But it’s not just the words he uses (all children describe their dinner as “delightful”, right?), it’s also the way he can’t just come out and say anything directly. There always has to be a story.

“When I was in Dinosaur World, my four uncles and I went to the zoo one day. But it wasn’t a zoo where they kept dinosaurs in cages, it was a zoo where dinosaurs could go and see people in cages. But it was okay because my uncles and I all dressed up as dinosaurs. I was a velociraptor, Bear was a T-Rex, Mole was a pachycephalosaurus, Kizzay was a brachiosaurus, and Silly was a pterodactyl. And when we wanted something to eat we had to go to the shop and buy some food, and they had lots of different things to eat, like chips and hamburgers and hot dogs and salad and sandwiches and bread rolls and lots of other things, and also sushi. And my uncles all had sushi for lunch.”

Long pause.

“Can I have sushi for lunch today?”

As you may remember, I’ve been sick for the last couple of weeks. My patience is not exactly at an all-time high. And the one thing guaranteed to send the remnants of a mother’s patience spiralling into oblivion is the need to remind a small child to eat their dinner over and over and over and over (and over) again.

“Eat you dinner please, Big Brother.”

“I am eating. I’m chewing. See?”

“Keep eating please.”

“Okay. But first I’m just going to build stairs with my cutlery….”

“Are you eating, Big Brother?”

“No, I’m drinking. Which is a kind of eating. Only it’s drinking. *starts laughing* Wouldn’t it be funny if eating was drinking and drinking was eating and you had to drink your food? That would be so awesomesauce.”

And so on, and so on, ad nauseam.

The other night, after at least thirty minutes of this type of conversation interspersed with brief moments of peaceful respite as he actually consumed some of the dinner I’d cooked, I’d had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. I told Big Brother I’d be back soon, and I fled the dining room to hide for five quiet minutes in the bathroom.

Three minutes later, the door was gently pushed aside and Big Brother stood there. Watching me. With a big smile on his face.

“Mummy?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered in what may or may not have been a less enthusiastic tone of voice than usual.

“One time in Dinosaur World–”

And I interrupted him. Because my sanity could take no more long, convoluted tales of imaginary worlds and people. ”Big Brother?” I said. (If I was inclined to use dialog tags other than ‘said’, I might have chosen to replace this one with the word ‘pleaded’.) “Can you just tell me what it is you want? I don’t want to hear a story, okay?”

And he looked at me, his beautiful blue eyes all wide and innocent. And his voice trembled a little as he said, “But I like stories.”

And somewhere deep inside my own story-loving heart, a little piece of magic was lost.

Do your children tell stories? Do you ever accidentally damp their enthusiasm?

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August 21, 2012 · 9:49 pm

Flash Fiction: You Can Quit

This week’s Flash Fiction challenge on TerribleMinds was a bit different. We were given five possible settings/scenarios, and had to choose one of them to write about. The options were:

  1. In the middle of a prison riot.
  2. Chinatown during a hurricane.
  3. In the Martian suburbs celebrating the Red Planet’s independence.
  4. In a haunted mountain pass.
  5. On the battlefield during a way between two races of mythological creatures.

I ruled out number 2 early on and then number 3, but it took me quite a while to settle on number 1. The story was also inspired by my husband musing about what type of prison you’d need for a non-super-powered super-villain. Please enjoy and leave your comments, thoughts and feedback below.

You Can Quit

Curtis took a long draw on his smoke and dropped the butt on the dirt. He ground it into the dirt with his heel then exhaled slowly. There was time for another, but he hesitated. Doris had been at him to quit again, telling him long, rambling stories about friends with mechanical voices and multi-coloured chemo drips until he was almost prepared to give up just so she’d stop.

Almost.

A young woman, maybe twenty-five or thirty, rounded the corner. “Excuse me, do you know where I’d find Warden Cole? He’s not in his office.”

Curtis was glad he hadn’t lit another smoke. Even forty years on, he was haunted by Sister Mary Margaret’s reaction when she caught him smoking behind the bike shed. That’s why he hid around the corner when he needed a nicotine hit.

“You’re lookin’ at him, Ma’am,” Curtis said, tipping an imaginary hat.

“Good afternoon,” she said with a smile. “I’m Veronica. Am I interrupting?”

“No, Ma’am. Just admirin’ the view,” Curtis said, tilting his head toward the desert landscape behind her.

Veronica smiled and then fixed her gaze on his face. “I heard there was a riot going on out here.”

Curtis sighed. Word travelled fast. “Surely is,” he said. “You listen, you can hear it through the wall. Nothin’ too bad this time, it’s just gotta run its course. You here to visit someone?”

“It sounds like you’ve had some experience with riots,” Veronica said.

Curtis hitched his trousers up over his belly. “That I have, Ma’am.” He frowned. “Course, a riot used to be about somethin’. Food or treatment or somethin’. Now…” he shrugged. “Now it’s all just politics.”

The word was an ugly one, muttered in the same way he’d say pornography or prostitution. “It’s them Mutants,” he said. Another dirty word. “Stupid idea, puttin’ ‘em in the lock-up with common folk. But politics says we gotta do it. We gotta treat ‘em with ‘equal rights’ an’ all that.”

Veronica didn’t blink. “Is a Mutant responsible for the riot today?”

Curtis laughed like a wounded hyena. “Responsible? I s’pose. But if you ask me, it’s the Governor’s fault. He transferred the Empath here.”

“An Empath started the riot?”

Curtis frowned and glanced at his watch. “I should be getting back, Ma’am. I’ve got a reporter comin’ to film me any minute. Got a speech I gotta give him, courtesy of the Governor.”

“Does the speech say an Empath started the riot?”

“Hell no,” Curtis said with a laugh. Then he remembered his manners. “Pardon my language, Ma’am. But the Governor’s not gonna say that. Politics an’ all. I just gotta say one of my guards ‘acted inappropriate’.” He made the air quotations he wouldn’t be able to make during the interview.

Veronica kept her eyes fixed on him. “Did a guard act inappropriately?”

“Nah,” Curtis said. The noise from behind the walls had died down. Maybe the riot was over. “The Empath transferred in last night, drugged up to the eyeballs to keep him quiet, and freaked out when he woke up. Started projectin’ fear and anger and next thing you know, his cellmate’s headbuttin’ the door tryin’ to get away. A couple o’ guards go in to settle things and soon the Empath’s projectin’ that shit everywhere. Half the guards fled and the inmates started fightin’ each other to be the first out. I hadda lock the place down. Damn Empaths shouldn’t be around people, you ask me. But you put ‘em in solitary and you have the human rights folks actin’ like you’re the one doin’ somethin’ wrong.”

Curtis shook his head in disgust. “They got that fancy prison for Mutants down in Dallas. Every time a Mutant gets caught they gotta build a new cell. They got  electrocuted walls so the Freaks can’t walk through ‘em, and rooms made o’ plastic and titanium and mercury and other crazy stuff. Costs taxpayers a fortune so they can’t do it for all of them. They gotta send the low level Mutants here. We get Empaths and Mind-Readers and Flyers and this one time we had a Freak who could hack computers with his brain.” He shook his head. “We’re just a prison. Ain’t got the facilities for Mutants.”

“So what’s the solution?”

The riot was definitely over. There was silence behind the wall. The only sound now was the muffled buzzing of his cell as it started vibrating in his pocket. He ignored it. “Simple. Put the Mutants on an island somewhere in the middle o’ nowhere. Let ‘em live out there, ‘stead of botherin’ good folk.”

“The Mutants convicted of crimes? Or innocent Mutants as well?”

“Innocent Mutants?” Curtis laughed his wounded-hyena laugh. “Ain’t no such thing. You give some Joe the power to walk through walls or read minds or make money outta nothin’, they’re gonna break the law. It’s just a matter of time.”

 His phone was still vibrating and it was past time for the reporter to arrive. He gestured for Veronica to accompany him back to the office. “Who did you say you were you here to visit, Ma’am?”

Curtis rounded the corner. An empty news van was parked in front of the office. There was no movement from within the vehicle, but a TV mounted on the roof showed the back of a man’s head as he walked toward a familiar building.

“What—“ Curtis breathed. He spun around, expecting to see a camera pointed at him. But there was only Veronica. Veronica with her odd, unblinking eyes. “You’re—“

“The reporter,” Veronica interrupted. “Broadcasting live.”

Curtis slumped. “Fuck,” he said. His voice echoed from every TV screen in the prison, the city, and the state.

In a daze, he pulled out his cell. It vibrated angrily. The caller ID said ‘Governor’.

As Sister Mary Margaret said, “You make your choices, you take your lashes.”

He lit a cigarette and answered the phone. At least he’d be able to tell Doris he quit something today.

 

 

 

 

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August 17, 2012 · 11:36 pm

Five Reasons to Write Flash Fiction

My Work In Progress is an Urban Fantasy novel that I’ve been writing for over a year, and I struggle to find enough time every week to work on it. And yet every week I spend two to three hours writing a 1000 word short story, a piece of flash fiction, to post on my site.

Isn’t that somewhat counter-productive?

Wouldn’t I be better off working on my novel for those hours?

Possibly. But here are five reasons I choose to write flash fiction each week.

1) Variety is the Spice of Life

My novel is awesome. If you know me in the meat-world and have ever made the mistake of asking, “So, what’s your novel about?” I’ve probably talked your ear off about how awesome it is. But here’s the thing: it’s a very specific kind of awesome. I love my world and my characters, but sometimes I want to write about someone different. Call me shallow, but I like to play the field. I want to write about vampires or wish fairies or zombies or something else that doesn’t feature in the world of my novel. So when a creepy, arrogant, domineering vampire wanders through my imagination, I don’t ignore him or tell him to go play with someone else. I get down and dirty with him in a thousands words or fewer and then return to my novel. 

2) Creativity Begets Creativity

The great thing about creativity is that it’s a bottomless resource. There’s no Great Creativity Shortage of the 21st Century to worry about. In fact, creativity in one thing often leads to creativity in another. If you’re struggling with your writing, go bake a cake. Or draw a picture. Or do some finger-painting. (Seriously, if you haven’t finger-painted since you were a kid, you have no idea what you’re missing out on.) It’s like jump-starting your creativity-mobile. Or setting a match to your creativity-powder. And other exciting metaphors. But you don’t have to wait until you feel your creativity starting to wane to take advantage of this. Writing  flash fiction that is unrelated to my novel helps keep my creative mind ticking over and means that when I get the time to work on my novel, I spend much less time staring at the screen wondering what I should write next.

3) Experiments are Fun

Ever wonder what it would be like to write a story from the point of view of the bad guy? Or how it would feel to live inside the head of a psychopath? Ever read a book and think, “I wish I could write like that!” or wonder just how many rhetorical questions you could put in a single paragraph? Flash fiction is a way to explore those things! For example, I have no desire to write a novel-length horror story but I quite enjoy experimenting with the edges of the horror genre in my flash fiction. It’s also a good way to practice storytelling techniques that you aren’t currently using in your longer work. Experiment with first person, close third person, distant third person, or omniscient Point Of View. Get a feel for the difference between past tense and present tense. Feeling adventurous and experimental? Try writing a whole story in future tense. Write a protagonist of the opposite gender than you usually write, or of a different age group, or tell the story as a computer program or a series of Tweets or Facebook updates. Build your craft and broaden your experience without committing yourself to something long-term.

4) Shopping in the Ideas Factory

Once upon a time, I thought I had a brain in my head. Then one day I realised I actually live in an Ideas Factory. Like most writers, the question “Where do you get your ideas?” is best answered with another question: “How do you get the ideas to stop?!” Every news story, overheard snippet of conversation, and everyday item spotted in an unusual place prompts a flurry of ideas and What Ifs to go careening through my head. What if the phone number displayed outside the vacant building is really the number visiting vampires have to call before they’re allowed to hunt in this suburb? What if the tree really did get up and walk in front of the moving car? What if the child is right and one day she turns into a shooting star watching over the Earth and protecting it from monsters? They never stop! If I was going to turn every one of my story ideas into a novel, I’d have to live to at least two hundred. Except, of course, I’d keep having more ideas. So I guess I’d need to live forever… Or I can go shopping in the Ideas Factory once a week and bring one of those ideas to life.

5) Basking in the Afterglow

Working on a novel is a long process. Even those people (who I’m secretly jealous of) who can whip out a first draft in ten days have to go back and revise and rewrite their work. And I’m not one of those people. Still, I get an amazing sense of satisfaction when I complete part of my novel. Writing one thousand words in a sitting makes me cheer and pat myself on the back. Finishing a chapter makes me want to dance around the room. There are milestones that can be celebrated. But…. It’s not like you’re really finished, is it? Especially when you’re still working on your first draft. But a couple of hours spent on a piece of flash fiction and POW. Finished. Smug sense of satisfaction enabled. It feels really, really good to hit that ‘Publish’ button. And every time, the warm feeling of writing afterglow reminds me how I’ll feel when I finally get my novel finished and back I go to the grindstone, motivated and feeling like a writer.

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August 8, 2012 · 3:00 pm

Share Your Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Last week, Howlin’ Mad Heather of Prawn and Quartered had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. She blogged about it and posed the question:

Have you had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day? Did anything good come out of it?

I really wanted to answer the question, but I had a problem. Which day to choose?

How about the day when I was 19 and I was running late to work on a Sunday morning, only to discover when I got there that I wasn’t wearing any shoes? 

No, not particularly terrible.

How about the day I parked my car at the train station on the way to work, and had to walk through near-torrential rain to catch the train? My heels were apparently not the best choice of footwear and I slipped, landing in a six-inch deep puddle and splashing my work clothes with mud and water. By the time I made it to work, they’d mostly dried — although they were wrinkled and dirty and looked like I’d slept in a dumpster. Adding to that effect, the styling wax in my hair had melted and re-set, making it look like I was wearing a badly formed helmet. I barely made it through the day without crying (mainly by hiding from people), then got back to my car to find I’d left my headlights on and had a flat battery.

No, not horrible enough.

How about the day I had a placental abruption when my first son was born, or when I developed pre-eclempsia when my second son was born?

No, while the childbirth experiences weren’t good, my beautiful boys were worth it.

How about the day when Little Brother was six weeks old and I arranged to meet a friend at a park? With two children whingeing in the back seat, I failed my “park the car safely” test and reversed into a brand new SUV, doing a combined total of $7.5K damage to our cars and freaking out both myself and the boys. Then, in an effort to make up the lost time it took to leave a note for the other driver, I took a short-cut down the side of a grassy hill. Sadly, my pram wasn’t designed for cross-country expeditions. It flipped upside down, dragging me with it. While I struggled desperately to right the pram and hope Little Brother was secured by his safety harness, I was dragged five metres down the hill until the slope plateaued. I was left with bruises, abrasions, a terrified six-week old and a seriously freaked out three-year old.

That was a very bad day.

But not very bad enough.

No, my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day happened the week after that. Little Brother was 7 weeks old and Big Brother was 3 years and 10 months.

I was feeling somewhat reluctant to go anywhere after my car accident and falling-down-the-hill experience, and we’d spent a couple of weeks at home. Finally, it was all too much. I put Little Brother in the dreaded pram, packed some formula and bottles (I was sadly unable to breastfeed), and went for a walk.

We went down the road to a walking track near the river, and then along the track. We wound our way over a bridge, past a soccer field, under a railway track, and to a little playground that I’d seen once before. I had no idea how to reach it by road, but the walk through the bush was really quite revitalising.

As soon as we got there, Little Brother woke up hungry. I had to prepare a bottle for him. “Wait just a minute,” I said to Big Brother. “I’ll get Little Brother sorted, then I’ll come help you on the climbing frame.” Then I (stupidly) turned my back to grab the formula and water out of the pram.

By the time I turned back, Big Brother had started climbing by himself. He was scaling a horizontal ladder of curved metal rungs that were far too far apart for his little legs.

His feet slipped off a rung and time slowed down. His arms pinwheeled in the air as he fell between the rungs. As he fell, he leaned forward. His chin slammed into the rung in front of him. His head shot backwards. Then he landed on his feet, his eyes rolling madly.

He looked at me. I looked at him. I could barely breathe. “Mummy?” he said in a weak voice. He took two steps towards me and then his knees gave out and he collapsed.

Then, like in a bad action flick, the cut under his chin that had been invisible until that moment opened and blood gushed out.

We were lucky — he didn’t lose consciousness. This was obvious because he started to shriek in pain and shock and fear as blood gushed from the wound. I picked him up and sat him on my lap, trying to calm him while simultaneously figure out how bad it was. I grabbed a cloth to press against the cut, but he fought my every attempt to get near it.

Tears flowed, blood flowed, and I suddenly realised that not all the screams were coming from Big Brother. In my panic, I’d completely forgotten that I had a second child who was still lying in his pram, crying for food.  

What could I do? I couldn’t put Big Brother down — he was screaming like a banshee and had a serious gash under his chin that probably needed stitches. But if I didn’t pick Little Brother up, he was going to keep screaming. I couldn’t even make up a bottle properly, because I needed two hands to do that. Plus, I didn’t have a car handy and home was a 3km walk away. The only thing I had was a phone.

I called my husband and calmly explained the situation to him.

Who am I kidding? I was near hysterical at this point. My voice was shaking so much I’m surprised he understood anything I said. I was struggling not to devolve into tears because that would only make the children worse. Somehow, my wonderful husband understood me.

“Call an ambulance,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s not a life threatening injury, they’ll always come for children. I’m leaving work right now. I’ll call you when I’m nearly home.”

So I called the ambulance. Except…

Except I had no idea where I was. I was forced to explain, in a shaky, near-hysterical voice, “I’m in a park. I don’t know where it is, and I can’t go and check because I’ve got two children with me and they’re both crying and I can’t move, but there’s a car park so there must be a road and I followed a path from my home, and I just really, really, really need an ambulance, like, right now.”

And you know what? She Google Mapped it. She talked me through the path I must have taken, listened to my descriptions, and worked out the name of the park. Then she sent an ambulance.

The moment the ambulance arrived, Big Brother was fascinated. Then the paramedics wanted to look at his chin and he screamed like a banshee. He had to be physically restrained so they could look at the wound and stick a temporary plaster on it. One of the paramedics picked up Little Brother and calmed him down, the other folded the pram and loaded it into the ambulance, and they asked which hospital I wanted to go to.

“I can’t go to hospital,” I said.

Because I couldn’t. I’d only brought enough formula to feed Little Brother once. If we went to the hospital, we’d be there for hours. (Just one reason I really wish I’d been able to breastfeed!) So the paramedics loaded us into the ambulance and drove us home. They checked everyone’s blood pressure (mine was a little high!), told Big Brother jokes, and then unloaded us and told me to be careful driving.

My husband was home. I handed a crying Little Brother to him, packed Big Brother in the car, and off we went to the hospital.

There was more physical restraining of Big Brother while the doctor glued up the wound (thank goodness it didn’t need stitches!) and we caught a taxi home. Big Brother fell asleep against me in the car, and I called my Mum. Because that’s just what you do.

All in all, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Now it’s your turn. Tell me about your terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

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