Inevitability

It was bound to happen. We have a lot of boys and a lot of LEGO's.

So yesterday I'm downstairs talking with my wife (and perhaps getting a Coke; is that really important?), when, from upstairs, we hear Jonah crying. Loudly. Intensely.

We're trying to figure out what's wrong ("Are you hurt?" "Did you fall?" "What's wrong?"), when he yells out the phrase that every 21st century parent dreads:

"I got a LEGO stuck up my nose!"

This is bad. On most things I'm moderately- to overly-cautious. Wear your shoes outside. Don't jump off the top bunk. Don't eat poo. Maintain a 20 foot perimeter around known anthills. etc.

But with LEGO's I've been a little lenient. Timothy had his first Bionicle set when he was 4. The age on the box said 7+. That was bad enough, but Permissions Creep (you know, that's the thing that lets 10-year-old fourth children watch Halloween 27) set in as well. At first we kept the "big boy LEGO's" in Timothy's room, and told Jonah to stay out. This worked for about a month. That same box is now actually in Jonah and Sam's room, and has grown to a 20 gallon Rubbermaid container. So we have a 2- and a 5-year-old with unlimited access to gazillions of LEGO's marked "8+".

(Please note, this does not include the new Zamor Spheres, a.k.a. the Lime Green Balls of Death, which are all hidden away in my office. I've got to draw the line somewhere.)

All this is to say . . . Jonah has a LEGO in his nose.

Now, I don't know about you, but on hearing this phrase the first thing I do is run through my mental catalog, looking for LEGO + Jonah's nose + worst possible thing. (Actually, this was the second thing. The first thing I did was to say a word that I later had to tell Jonah never to repeat and that I promised him I would never say again.)

As to the worst possible LEGO that could get stuck in Jonah's nose, I came up with this:
According to www.peeron.com (yes, of course I have an account, don't you?), this is a "Brick, 1 x 1 Round with Solid Stud". The "Round" part means that for something that is rather large (preschool nose-wise, anyway), it is of the right shape to perfectly block the nasal passage. That "Solid Stud" bit means that air cannot go through it.

So this is what is going through my mind as I begin to look up Jonah's nose.

And I see . . . nothing. Another not child-friendly word. Another apology.

Here's how my mind works. When I don't see the Brick, 1 x 1 Round with Solid Stud, I don't think, "perhaps it is something else." I think, "Oh, @#$*, that thing is so far up there that I can't see it." Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Instead, it's evidence to me that my son has a LEGO embedded in his brain and that we're going to the emergency room.

So I go to get a flashlight. And while I'm doing this, two things happen. One, I realize that we don't have any Bricks, 1 x 1 Round with Solid Stud. They were discontinued when I was a kid (yes, i actually know this; and regardless of what you think, in LEGO nerd-dom, I am barely a lance corpral). What we do have are Bricks, 1 x 1 Round with Hollow Stud.

See. There's a hole. No death involved.

The second thing that happens is a sneeze. Jonah sneezes.

My wife, in reward for her role in trying to comfort Jonah, shrieks, "Ewww! Where is it?"

And, sure enough, hanging from her knee, embedded in . . . well, you know what, is the LEGO. And it's not a Brick, 1 x 1 Round anything. It's this:
Except that it's black (well, green and black). It's a Technic Axle 2 Notched, of which we have more than a hundred in the uber-bin upstairs.

After resuming normal breathing, I ask Jonah, "Why did you stick a LEGO up your nose?" (Actually, although in the process of calming, I use a milder, although still apology-worthy word in the above sentence.)

His answer: "I don't know." Which means that he had this thing in his hand and thought, "I can stick this up my nose" without any awareness of, or thought toward, any long-term consequences.

This is why we don't let them have guns. Or vote.