Different Year, Same Hospital Bills

I had planned to use the first post of the new year to crown a winner of the Dick Loggins Contest in which one lucky reader would be rewarded for illustrating a penis dressed up as Kenny Loggins with something from the Official Dogs On Drugs Giant Bookcase of Crazy Shit, but that plan was thwarted by my six year old who took it upon himself to ring in the new year by swallowing a ball bearing. (If you’re new to this site and find yourself wondering about that contest, yes, it is a real contest, and no, I haven’t taken my meds in quite a while.)

The ball bearing my son swallowed is actually part of a popular toy called Magnetix, which can be used to create wondrous geometrical shapes and also make toddlers turn blue in the face. A Magnetix set consists of two basic pieces: Magnetic rods which can kill you if you swallow them by tearing your intestines apart from the inside, or metal balls which can kill you if you inhale them. Needless to say, this toy is so dangerous that I hide it behind the blasting caps and heroin so that my kids won’t find it.

Unfortunately, kids find everything. When you were a kid, was there a single square inch of your house that you hadn’t explored thoroughly? Of course not. The second your parents turned their backs, you went into full blown child reconnaissance mode and found every single thing that your parents tried to hide from you. Sometimes this worked out great. I knew quite a few friends in high school who had located their parents stash, which was promptly raided when our own drug supply dropped below acceptable limits.

Other times, however, it ended in disaster. A particularly unpopular classmate once invited several neighborhood kids over to his house to play his new Intellivision, which was the hottest videogame console of 1980, sporting up to one color and jaw-dropping two pixel resolution. Needless to say, we jumped at the chance to play Intellivision and stayed at his house until the novelty wore off. Desperate to keep his new “friends” over at his house, Chris then offered to show us all “something I found in my mom’s room”.

I’m sure you can guess where this is headed

Chris had rooted through his entire house so thoroughly that he had located a false bottom in a drawer in his mother’s dresser. He quickly opened this false bottom and held up a large, black, hinged dildo with sharp, protruding metal studs running the entire length. It was the kind of sex toy you could imagine a rhinoceros using, or perhaps Courtney Love. It may have provided Chris’ mom enjoyment, but it sent us running for home at full speed.

The point is, if you have lost something illegal or dangerous in your home, the surest way of finding it is to have children present. And of course it was only a matter of time before my kids found the Toy of Doom (which had originally been purchased for me to play with since, my love of adult themes notwithstanding, I am immature to the point that I will buy things for myself in Toys R Us).

At first, the Metal Pieces of Death were only played with under the baleful eye of Daddy, but as my kids got older and less likely to put things into their mouth, this restriction was loosened somewhat. And because of this, the occasional metal ball would roll off where it could be found later by a child who would then proceed to put it in his mouth, fall off the couch, and then swallow it as my middle son did.

Luckily, the metal balls are not magnetic, and because they aren’t we can expect it to pass in a day or two. After that, the only serious side effect is him being grounded for several years because in order to verify that he passed the ball, we now have to sift through his shit.

That fucker.

Happy 2013, everyone!