My Son, the Hypochondriac

I've known for some time that Gardner, my nine-year old, has entrenched health worries and fears. Whenever he gets sick, it's always "the end" and all that.

Well, to my horror, my wife has been telling him that some of his stomachaches of late might be caused by an ulcer because he drinks too much soda pop. And a friend at school has filled him with horror stories about tapeworms. So I should not have been surprised when one night Gardner staggered into my office with the news that his stomach hurt.

"I don't know what it is," he said. "Do you know what it is?"

"Probably just gas, or something like that."

"But gas comes out. In a burp or a . . . you know. So it couldn't be gas."

"Go lie down. See if you feel better."

He lay down for about six seconds. "Oh, I feel really dizzy. Could a tape worm or ulcer make you dizzy?"

"I don't think so, Gardner. Take some Tums."

He did.

A minute later: "Dad, I saw a light or something flash in the basement."

"So?"

"So it could be someone."

I sighed. Gardner also has a desperate fear of intruders sneaking into our house and whacking all of us, though it's his own little hide that he's most worried about in that arena. "I don't think anyone is down there," I said.

He lay down again. Then: "Dad, I feel so bad. My brain hurts."

"Take some aspirin."

"No, it's not a headache."

"What is it, then?"

I waited. I braced for something really crazy. I wasn't disappointed.

"I think that flash put something into my brain."

"Like what? An alien?" We'd discussed this before. I told him unequivocally there are no aliens. If they wanted to take someone over, I told him it would be the President or someone powerful, maybe Bill Gates or Bono or Gene down at the local McDonalds, but not him. He is clearly unconvinced.

"Maybe a ghost or something."

"Gardner, just lie down and go to sleep."

"I can't. I'm scared. What would it feel like if I had an ulcer?"

So we were back to that now. "They'd have to go in and sew up your stomach and you could only eat bread with warm milk poured over it. No more root beer. No more macaroni and cheese. No more McDonalds Happy Meals."

He stared at me in abject horro. "I couldn't eat any more chicken McNuggets?"

"Definitely not. But that's what happens when you have an ulcer. Plus, you'd probably be spitting up blood. Plus, you would feel much worse than you do right now. Plus, you'd have to go to the hospital and get lots of shots." That always put the fear of doctors into his heart.

He appeared to mull this over. "Shots?"

"Five, ten, twenty of them or so. Long, gleaming needles."

His already very white face went whiter. "But what about a tapeworm?"

How could I calm his worried soul? "If you had a tapeworm, it would crawl up into your mouth and wiggle out of your lips and smile at us."

"Really?"

"I've heard they can do that." Don't ask me where, please. Probably in college. We heard a lot about guys who ate immense quantities of food who obviously had tapeworms back then. I must've known ten or twenty guys who had them(supposedly). In fact, some said I had one, but I knew I didn't because nothing had ever wiggled into my throat and said Hi.

"So maybe I don't have one?" he said.

"Probably not."

He lay down again. Then: "How old do you have to be for them to operate on you to take out a tapeworm, Dad?"

"Thirty-five," I said without hesitation.

"Exactly thirty-five? Or could it be less?"

"No, only more, not less."

He thought about this. "So it wouldn't happen to me for a long time?"

"Nineteen years," I answered, hoping this had settled it.

He sank down again. Then: "I feel really bad, Dad. My stomach feels really bad. I think it's a tapeworm."

I sighed heavily. "For the millionth time, Gardner, you don't have a tapeworm. If you did, you'd be so skinny you'd look like a stick. You'd be so skinny, you'd have to run around in the shower to get wet. You'd be so skinny, your Adam's Apple would stick out like a giant tumor."

Oh, no, there I'd done it. Now he'd be worried about tumors.

"Oh" was all he said, though.

He went silent until suddenlyI heard something. I whipped around. He vomited all over the floor. I could smell it from my perch at the desk. "Run to the bathroom, Gardner!"

He ran - but only after he'd finished depositing everything on the floor.

I reluctantly began cleaning it up. Every feel seconds, I forced back heaves into my throat from the stench, making a noise like, "hoop, hoop." I hate the smell of puke.

Gardner sidled back in. "I feel a lot better, Dad."

"Wonderful." I sopped up the last of it, fighting off the urge to puke myself.

He watched me. Then: "Was there a tape worm in it?"

I should have seen this coming. And then with that illumination that comes to a parent while they're in the middle of some disgusting task like the one I was engaged in, I saw a way to nix this obsession once and for all. "Yes, there was. It lay there all gross and disgusting. I killed it. Squished the head with my shoe."

"Really?"

"It was writhing and going crazy. It obviously wanted to go back to your stomach. So it's a good thing you vomited it up. We'd never have gotten him out otherwise."

"Wow." Gardner's eyes looked like CDs.

"Yeah, I let Zoe eat it," I told him. Zoe is our will-eat-anything-including-cat-poop Labrador retriever.

"But she could get it inside her, too."

"She needs to lose weight anyway." I knew now he'd worry about her, so I said, "But I think the tapeworm was dead, so it won't affect her."

He stood there for awhile. "I guess I'm okay now, huh?"

"Yeah, nothing to worry about anymore. Go to sleep in the peaceful slumber of those whose conscience is clear, their lives clean, and their hearts untroubled."

He stared at me. "What's that mean?"

"I made it up. Go to bed." I trotted off to the kitchen with the last of the vomit pieces.

He went to his room to crawl in bed. I went back to my desk and wrote this. I wonder what's next? Cancer? Alzheimers? An alien abduction with full anal inspection?

Whatever it is, I'll be ready. I'll get Gardner to vomit it up, kill it, and have Zoe eat it. That's my new formula for success in solving this parenting issue.