My mother says she used to pride herself on how safe and healthy she kept her children while we were growing up. All the other mothers were constantly in the emergency room, getting their kids' broken legs set, their noses stitched back together, their concussions evaluated. But her kids had a clean record! 

Then she realized that her kids, on a typical day, saw about as much action as the rosary on Jack Chick's nightstand.  It's pretty hard to break anything when you spend your leisure time lying on your ear reading Archie comics and eating cold noodles out of a sandwich bag.

My kids have managed to break both molds: they are both shamefully sedentary, and monstrously accident prone. We just got back from the ER -- only our second trip of the summer, which is pretty amazing. I was there with my sixteen-year-old daughter, who came out with five stitches after being on the wrong end of a tussle with the refrigerator.

We were in and out in under three hours, and discovered that it's both more entertaining and more terrifying when you have a mobile device and can look up what the different "codes" shouted over the intercom mean. For the record: my adolescent was not the combative one in that last code grey. The worst she did was snort a little when the doctor accidentally called her "honey."  Here are some other things I've learned over the years, on our many trips to the ER:

--Some doctors are good doctors, but terrible human beings in every other way.  What other reason could you possibly have for saying to a little child whose toe you are reattaching, "Oh, it can't possibly hurt that much"? Or what, other than utter moral depravity, would induce you to show that child the tools you will be using to remove what's left of his toenail? Did you graduate from the Struwwelpeter School of Pediatric Medicine, or what?

--Some kids ought to have a wing dedicated to them, or at least a plaque in the triage room. Or a VIP parking space, or a a pass entitling them to endless apple juice and graham crackers.  Or something.

--There are plenty of days when it would actually be no big deal to go to the ER, because you have babysitters, you have nothing else scheduled that day, you already made supper, or some other such fantastical scenario. But that is not when kids want to get hurt. They want to get hurt when you are packing to go camping in the morning, when you are five minutes away from accompanying someone down the aisle, when you were up all night with a teething baby and a bat in the heating vent, or -- my then two-year-old daughter's favorite -- when you are in active labor. Truly, you haven't lived until you've tried as hard as you can to explain to the L&D nurse where your pain falls on a scale of one to ten, but you keep on being distracted by the thought that NECK PAIN IN CHILDREN ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS MEANS MENINGITIS.

--One of the greatest functions of the ER is to illustrate for your children why you do not pay for TV at home. Ninety nine channels, 'round and around and around you go.  See, kids? There is nothing on. Nothing.

--If you are holding a catheter tube, and I say, "Careful, she is little, but she is strong," then you should listen to me.

--Most health professionals are working as hard as they possibly can, doing difficult and disgusting things, and it's hard to imagine why they would be there for any other reason besides that they want to help people. It almost brought tears to my eyes when I thought about how lucky I was to be in a huge building full of people who mainly just wanted to help. Or maybe I was just lightheaded, because the vending machine ate all my quarters and I missed my second coffee and lunch.

I'll tell you one thing, though. Unlike some of those bad mothers, I've never had to bring my kids to the ER twice in one day. This is because I keep my children safe and healthy, unlike some of those bad, careless mothers. Now, who has my bag of noodles? Because I missed lunch and dinner.