Poison Control Operator: Poison Control, how may I help you?
Me: Uh, yes…my son just ate part of an old and rather stale gingerbread house…
PCO: How old, ma’am?
Me: Three years…
PCO: The gingerbread house is three years old?
Me: Oh, no. My son is three years old.
PCO: What is the weight?
Me: Just eyeballing it, I’d say maybe a pound and a half? Two pounds? Aidan, go get the scale!
PCO: I was asking for the weight of your son.
Me: Before or after a bath? Uh. About 34 pounds.
PCO: How much of the house did he consume?
Me: Well, he ate some of the roof tiles with little red and green round candies. I’m not sure what they are—roundish. Gumdrop Lane is gone, and Grampa Gingerbread is headless. His right arm is dangling by a frosting thread. Some of the icicles are chipped off. The starlight mint over the front door is streaked, as if someone has been licking it. In fact, a lot of the candies appear to have been licked repeatedly. The foundation seems unstable. I’d deem the damage to be comparible to a Category 2 hurricane.
PCO: Is he coherent?
Me: Somewhat. He keeps calling himself “The Big Bad Wolf”—is that normal?
PCO: We see it sometimes with petrified icing exposures. Gingerbread houses, in general, induce grandiose behaviors in at-risk kids, specifically little boys of preschool age.
Me: Will my son have any lasting damage?
PCO: With any luck, no. He may have an upset stomach for a day or two.
Me: So I don’t have to induce vomitting?
PCO: No, he will do that on his own, and most likely on a day when you have many activities and errands planned. Do you have any other poison emergencies?
Me: Well, there’s this fruitcake in the back of the fridge…
LOL. Our cat did that one year. She loved the gingerbread house. You wouldn’t think it would taste very good. But as a kid I always wondered what it would be like to run into a REAL house made of candy and planned to do the same. Taste every bit of it.
This is hysterical! Do you remember the Seinfeld episode where Elaine eats the historical wedding cake?
fruit cake that’s funny!
cute story
That is so funny! I mean, well – I hope there aren’t any lasting effects, but goodness. LOL I once ate a peppermint candy from a styrofoam tree decoration. I think the candy was about 20 years old. I don’t think I had any lasting effects! 😀 It was really soft and quite stale.
BWAHAHAHA!
Oh my! That is hilarious.
Laugh out loud funny. 🙂
LOL You crack me up!
You’ve been tagged Gretchen! Have fun!
Funny what kids will eat. That sounds like something I would have done. I love gingerbread houses. that’s hilarious.
My imagined call this weekend was about a Christmas tree that hubby inadvertently dragged through dog poop–or was it goat? In any case, I decorated gingerly and wondered if there was any danger of contamination . . . not the day I had envisioned.
Thanks for laugh…did he suffer much?