Yet Another Mystery ...

Last night, after tucking the kids in, Pa and I were relaxing in the living room when Lindsay, our youngest came striding into the room. While not all that unusual, (there are times she gets up and asks for a drink of water) it did take us by surprise when she announced, with a smile on her face, that her tummy hurt.

Hmmm. She doesn't look sick. She seemed just fine an hour ago when I tucked her in. Just the same, immediately all sorts of causes for her sudden illness began running through my head. Had she perhaps had a hard tummy bump when she fell off her bike earlier? Maybe she picked something up when playing with the neighbor kids the day before? Nah, That'd only been one day ago. Then again, we had gone to town on Saturday...Perhaps she'd picked something up then? For that matter, had she washed her hands when we returned home from town on Saturday?

My imagination now switched to high, I began to question her.

"What kind of hurt is it?"

"Sick hurt."

"Where does it hurt?"

"Right here!"

"That's your belly button!"

"Yeah, that's where it always hurts when I get sick."

"What kind of sick?"

"Just sick!"

I sighed at this response, beginning to understand how my Mother felt when I was a child and my response to her query of what my "sick" felt like was, "Lettuce"...


I resumed my questioning, "Do you feel sick anywhere else?"

"No, just my tummy"

She looked like she was beginning to enjoy this game of twenty questions.

"Does it feel like throw up sick?"

"No"

"Okay, that's good. Does it feel like diarrhea sick?"

That got me a blank look.


"Do you feel stinker sick?"

Laughter, "NO!!!" More laughter.

Okay, so just how sick could this giggly child with no fever be?

"Do you feel hungry sick?"

"No"

I was running out of options here! "Do you feel too full sick?"

"Yes!"

Aha! We hit paydirt!

"But, you didn't eat that much dinner..."She agreed. "Then again, you did eat quite a large portion of dessert.."

"Yeah! And it was filling!"

"But, you ate a lot, and you ate it fast!"

"I had to! It was really, really good!"

Uh-huh! I glanced around the kitchen briefly before informing her, "We don't have any 'too full sick' medicine."

"Oh! Darn!"

"I'm afraid the only thing I can think of for 'too full sick' is to go to sleep, then when you wake up in the morning, you won't be 'too full sick' anymore"

"Oh! Okay!"

She smiled and skipped off towards her room, leaving me standing there, shaking my head, as Pa stood off to the side, laughing. I'm thinking, in the future perhaps some portion control for the "really, really good" desserts would be a really, really good idea.