By The Mother Load
Nancy Crochiere
May 21, 2008 12:08 am Most families have rituals that bring them closer together. Some host an annual Memorial Day cookout, a few take in a Red Sox game, others have theater tickets. But take it from me, when your family is looking for "together time," nothing beats a good trip to the emergency room. Over the years, our family has spent a fair amount of time in emergency rooms. This peculiar pastime has resulted, by and large, from our children's bad luck in contact sports, though one ER visit followed a simple fall from playground equipment. Really, we'll use any excuse for a get-together. By now, our family members can offer a pretty accurate comparison of ER waiting rooms. We know which hospital has the best vending machines, the biggest HDTV screens, the most recent magazines, the fastest wheelchairs, the cutest male nurses. Each ER also has its own ambience. In one waiting room, we sat next to two young girls sporting softball bruises and scrapes, while in another, most of those waiting looked like they had been on the wrong end of a knife fight. We didn't linger at this latter location. As if the atmosphere of imminent danger wasn't enough, their vending machines didn't even have Skittles. Our most recent ER adventure, which took place just last week, began at a soccer game in which our teenaged daughter used her ankle to try to stop another girl's kick. Her ankle lost. Because we had traveled some distance to that soccer match (I can't recall the name of the town, but I'm pretty sure its Web site is www.EndoftheEarth.com), we had several hospitals to choose from on our way home. However, we quickly rejected the ER with the knifing victims in favor of the place where we're considered regulars. (This ER's waiting room also has the biggest HDTV screen, though that didn't figure into our decision ... really.) Now, I won't pretend that everyone at this hospital knew our name, but our daughter was already right there in its computer system. We felt at home. And feeling at home made me realize that we might have some tips to offer other families. Here's how you can use the resources available at the emergency room to make your visit as comfortable as possible.. r Food. OK, yes, the vending machines offer mostly candy, but you can cover a few food groups with what's available. I like to count popcorn as a vegetable, and Peanut M&M's must contain some protein, right? I know that calling Starburst a fruit is probably stretching things, and, admittedly, Twizzlers only qualify as dessert — you really can't pretend there's anything nutritious in them, no matter how hard you try. r Entertainment. Blowing up latex gloves can provide hours of family fun and you can make many more balloon animals out of them than you would think (unless, of course, you're really picky about them actually looking like animals, in which case, not so many). r Education. You can learn quite a bit in an emergency room from the interesting selection of magazines in the waiting areas. For example, who knew that Heath Ledger had a secret love child? Or that Britney Spears and Mel Gibson were vacationing together? And it's not just important stuff like that. In the three hours we spent there, I learned the best time to catch outsize bass as well as how to protect my lawn from fungal pathogens. When else would you have time to learn stuff like this? r Exercise. If your child is willing to share (and sometimes she's not, because being in pain can put her in a rather testy mood), you can use her crutches around the floor to get a pretty good aerobic workout. If you're there in the wee hours of the morning and nothing much is going on, sometimes the nurses will race you. So, remember, what constitutes quality family time depends a lot on how you look at it. In our family, we tend to see the Starburst pack as half full. nnn Nancy Crochiere is a freelance writer and editor who tries to look at the vagaries of modern family life with humor. You can e-mail her in care of ndn@newburyportnews.com.
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