Puffy and Stung

Within three hours, five of the the ten children were suffering the lashes of a slew of nasty red jelly fish. The first kid felt "tingly" and then felt hysterical and soon after, forgot how to use language and also how to swim. She was towed in by someone else's sweet-talking father into her mother's arms (that would be me) who tried to explain that a summertime sting is pretty much a rite of passage, much like losing a first tooth or wiping out on a scooter. Naturally, she could not hear me, what with all the howling, so she missed the part where I explained the options: wait about ten minutes for the pain to subside or LET SOMEONE PEE ON YOU.

She heard the latter strategy as it contained the words PEE and YOU and were not in the order she might have liked.

A couple more hysterical minutes passed before someone else's quick-thinking mother filled a cup with the elixir and offered it up, unflinchingly and without the slightest blush. She got eyeball to eyeball with my screaming kid (who by now could see the stings erupting all over her body -- more horror!) and explained how clean "elixir" is and why "elixir" works and that sometimes you just have to do weird things.

Suffice it to say, elixir works like a charm. When the four other kids came running to shore equally lashed and puffy, the pee thing was just the obvious choice. Duh. Like a new rite of passage.

Lessons are learned in strange and unexpected ways, and yesterday's were some of the best:

1) When hurt or scared or stung or bitten or freaked out, it is best to keep breathing, talking, swimming, or walking.

2) Always, in almost all circumstances, take a deep thoughtful breath before acting, weigh all the options in front of you, and make the simplest, most effective, least damaging choice.

3) Sometimes the right choice will seem gross or contrary to traditional reasoning. Choose it anyway.

4) You will know your true friends by their willingness to offer you "elixir" or consequently, to accept yours.