Quite a mouthful

Ngaire got a rubber worm out of the prize bucket at school a few weeks back. I can’t find a lookalike on the Internet, but it looked kind of like a supersized gummy worm. It was fun and squiggly; the kids liked to play with it in the bath.

Last night, Ngaire asked to take her worm to bed with her. I tucked the two of them in.

An hour or so later, I heard a gagging sound and went in to check on her. Ngaire had swallowed her worm.

I repeat: SWALLOWED (as in, NOT CHEWED) her worm.

She was rather traumatized by this, not so much by the experience (though she did complain that she could still feel it in her throat) but by the fact that her worm was now gone. She kept saying, “I should never have taken it to bed with me!”

To which I could only reply, “No, you shouldn’t have put it in your mouth and SWALLOWED IT.”

Today, she complained of a tummyache, but otherwise she seems to have come through the devastation in one piece. One wonders whether the same will be said of the worm.

Tonight, she took a giant Dalmatian stuffed animal to bed. As we were tucking her in, I told her, “Now, Ngaire, whatever you do, do NOT swallow that Dalmatian.”

1 comment May 6, 2011