Chips, Salsa and An Ice-Pack

     I make it a practice to try to return all of my children's friends home safely to their mothers without a trip to the Emergency Room or an intrarcranial hematoma.    This particular day, my daughter brought along a new friend whose mother trusted me with her daughter's safety. We stopped in Chili's for lunch and I walked into the restroom at the exact moment that my two girls discovered that one should not use their head as a door stop and that the other had the power of a freight train.   The Red Cross First Aid steps ran through my head (Check, Call Care) as this baseball size knot began growing on this poor child's head and I realized that these simple steps were only good when giving first aid to a mannequin named Red Cross Annie in a classroom setting.    I checked her head, called for the waitress to hold the appetizers and just bring an ice pack and care was evident as Abby posed for the kids to snap photos to quickly upload to Facebook.  I knew I had to call her mother as they were photo-shopping a large horn coming from her head and preparing to send it out to 462 friends of friends.   This is not the photo you want her mother to run across with 17 "likes"next to it and no knowledge of what has happened.   The fourth step in the Red Cross First Aid plan should be to secure everyone's cell phones and control all outgoing messages and photos until you have properly notified the child's mother. After that, the kids are free to upload messages, photos and videos.  You know it's bad when the table next to you is trying to take a picture, too and they don't even know you.


     My heart sank as I knew I would be unable to return this child unharmed.  According to Abby's mother, some guy on yahoo answers and a quickly googled up version of the American Medical Pediatric Guidelines, she should be okay since there were no signs of  nausea, blurred vision, headache, or exposed skull.   But let's face it... a giant knot is just a horrible thing to return a kid with.   We finished our chips and salsa, refilled our ice-pack and prepared to leave as the girls announced that they needed to go to the restroom.   I begged them to open the door with their hands and not their heads this time. Last thing we needed was a matching knot on the other side.