With the girls I never miss an injury, a cut, a scrape, an ache, a pain. They are basically a couple of Peggy Ann McKays, only it’s not just Saturday, it’s every day. It’s how they are in personality in general, really. Oversharers. They will make excellent bloggers one day, I’m certain. I get play-by-play updates from school, from birthday parties, from trips to the park, from their showers. I know everything.

My son, on the other hand, shares exactly nothing with me. I don’t discover that he’s ill until I find him asleep in his bed in the middle of the day. He doesn’t begin with the same, “My head hurts. Why does my head hurt? I think I might be getting sick. Do you think I’m getting sick? Can you feel my forehead—do I have a fever? Do you think I need to lie down?” as his sisters do. I just find him, sick.

The girls are me.

The boy is his father.

(The same father who didn’t tell me about a hockey injury until he was already in physio for it, four months after he first felt it. So.)

This is the very reason why I was mostly unsurprised when my son held up his hand during a very important binge-eating, tailgaiting situation at Lambeau Field and said,

“Hey. Is my finger supposed to be dangling to the side like this?”

And sure enough it was doing just that.

Dangling.

Apparently he had hurt it playing football while we were in St. Lucia. LAST MONTH. And just really never got around to telling us about it.

Now, I don’t fancy myself much of a medical expert. I mean, sure I like to watch hospital dramas, but my expertise is really very limited and even *I* knew that his middle finger was of the broken variety. I’m double jointed and even my fingers are not that type of bendy. It was basically signaling left.

And that was how we found ourselves driving straight from Green Bay to the emergency room. And how we will be finding ourselves at a plastics specialist later this week. Because that finger is most definitely broken. Very, very broken.

And while he’s off not drawing any attention to it, I’ll probably be over here, medicating for the pain. And whining about it.

As I am apt to do.