[Posted to am 6/28/01-- TR]

....every time I hear the phrase, "Daddy? We were just playing
and..."

All three daughter-units were playing quietly together, I was
reading newsgroups, and SWMBO¹ was napping because of a difficult
day of shopping (a high-energy, very-curious, toddler in places
like Waterford, Noritake, Mikasa, Revereware, and Maidenform -- it
was surreal.) Real Life® does get better but I didn't have any
smoked salmon at that point.

It was 4:35 p.m.

Daughter-unit Beta, The Informant, nonchalantly padded down the
hall into the computer room. She wasn't panicked or crying so I
didn't turn around.

She waited, quietly, for me to acknowledge her.

For some reason, I noticed that there was none of the muffled
background noise usually associated with quiet time at Castle
Ranger. She started to ask me something but I motioned for her to
wait. I cocked my head to listen some more. She started to
fidget... Always a giveaway to an upcoming drama.

Resigned, I sighed, "What happened?"

"Daddy? [as if I wasn't already focused on her] We were playing
and... and... it's not that bad... and Sister... Well... She needs
you to come down quick." I heard her finish off her meandering
explanation half-way down the hall.

I swung around the corner, through the doorway, into Daughter-unit
Alpha's bedroom, where the girl-units were playing. Spawn was
looking up into the bloody cavern of her sister's mouth with
rapped fascination.

"What happened? No. D-uB!! You tell me. And tell me without the
fluff."

"We were just playing..."

"I already got that part."

"Wulllll... We were."

"...And??"

"I kicked her. Not hard. Well, not too hard, and then she held her
mouth and it started to bleed and I thought you should know and is
she going to die and it looks bad and yucky..."

"Be quiet. Go get your mother. You. Follow me." And away we went
into Clan Ranger's ER (the girls' bathroom.)

I flipped on the overhead lights as we entered. Taking a closer
look, I noticed the tooth was pushed high into the gums and was
virtually out. Using a Kleenex®T©, I blotted away as much of the
mess as I could. (Abstract thought: I'd once considered facial
cuts the most prolific bleeders but my daughter's mouth disproved
that theory.) It took two Kleenex®T© to clean up the tooth enough
for me to be able to grab onto it.

D-uA, being blessed with the constitution of the proverbial ox,
never flinched, gagged, or whined. The tooth was very loose and
the gums very red, so I knew how much it had to be hurting. I
reached in with another Kleenex®T© and grabbed onto the tooth. It
came out without any resistance...

I looked into the Kleenex®T©. There, in the middle of the tissue,
half the tooth was gently cradled.

I said a naughty word. Two of my three little girls _told_ me I
said a naughty word.

D-uA opened her mouth back up. I could guess how much effort was
going to be required for me get the rest of her tooth. That guess
told me it was beyond my experience; a call into their dentist was
in order. SWMBO was slogging up the stairs at this point and met
us as I walked back into the computer room. We didn't say anything
as we passed. I picked up the phone and dialed the office.

It was 4:45.

"Thank you for calling the practices of Dr. X, Dr. Y, and Dr. Z.
If you already know the extension of the doctor you need to talk
to, please press... If this is an emergency, please dial..." I
hung up and dialed the other number. A nurse picked up the line.

"Dr. Y's."

"This is... My daughter broke her tooth and has a portion stuck in
her gums. Is Dr. Y still available?"

"Please hold." [Musak, from the 70's and 80's, is played] "How
quickly can you be here? Please bring her in."

I heard D-uB stress that phrase again, "...But we were /just/
playing!"

"Let's go. We're all going. Go get in the car," I bellowed as I
started to head down the stairs without looking at anyone.

Two of the three girls made slight protests about how unnecessary
they were to this trip but I'm guessing the storm cloud and
lightening strikes hanging over my head as I looked back down the
hallway drowned out their pleas.

We made it to the dentist's in five minutes - minus the CHP that
pulled in to the parking lot as I parked. A minor explanation,
lots of laughter from said CHP officer, and a mild warning allowed
me to join my fam-dam-ly in the waiting room.

Dr. Y got the remaining portion of broken calcium out of D-uA's
jawline and the Tooth Fairy did perform another successful
extraction/replacement.

<sigh> This is a really funky vacation².

The Ranger

¹ http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~schott/rumpo...ences/she.html
² SWMBO is off on a well-deserved vacation. So far we've
experienced some interesting³ day-destroying episodes.
³ It's all relative.