Last night I left the kids at home on their own for half an hour while I went to meet Mr Frugal from work and popped to the shop to see what bargains I could find in the reduced section.
It’s not unusual for me to leave them at home these days when I’m just popping out and at 11 and 13, they’re more than capable of taking care of themselves for short periods. We have lots of rules that they have to follow but I’m not going to go into them today as that’s a whole other post – all you need to know for today is that our big rule is that we stay in touch when they’re on their own.
Anyway, back to last night when the kids were on their own for about half an hour.
When I left, all was calm with Miss Frugal on Skype with a group of friends and Master Frugal playing on the xBox with his friends. I met Mr Frugal from work and we popped into Tesco to see what the reduced section had to offer us but it seems that the professionals had beaten us to it as there was a bit of a crowd around the fridge where the lady was in the process of marking prices down even lower than they already were.
I’m not one to go into battle with the hardcore bargain hunters so after a few unsuccessful attempts to get close enough to see what there was, I gave up and we came away empty handed. I did manage to get some reduced cookies from the bakery section though so it wasn’t a complete waste of a trip!
We got home to find Master Frugal sat on the settee holding a soggy piece of kitchen roll over his eye and Miss Frugal rifling through the freezer with half the contents all over the floor.
Master Frugal’s situation looked more serious that his sisters so I took that one while whatever it was that his sister was up to was investigated by Mr Frugal. It turns out that the sore eye was a result of tripping up in his bedroom and landing face first on the bed frame and the wet paper towel was because that’s what the school dinner ladies do whenever anyone hurts themselves. I told him that he should have phoned us immediately so we could have come home straight away and his answer was this:
Mam! We didn’t need to phone you because Miss Frugal got me a wet paper towel – you couldn’t have done anything else, could you?
Turns out Mr Frugal was having a similar conversation in the kitchen about why Miss Frugal hadn’t called us:
There was no need as I gave him a hug and put a wet paper towel on it for him. I actually gave him a hug Dad and he wasn’t crying so a wet paper towel was all it needed.
When asked why the contents of the freezer were all over the kitchen floor, she responded with this:
I was looking for the frozen onions to put on his eye because I didn’t want to use the peas. I like peas and I don’t want to have to eat ones that have been on his eye, do I?
They’re right that the school do use paper towels for all sorts of injuries – there’s been many a time over the years that one of the kids has come out of school at the end of the day holding a wet paper towel over a random injury that they’ve acquired that day. Their healing abilities aren’t just limited to the odd cut or bruise either apparently as they’re given out for headaches and other random pains that children might develop during the day at school.
So the lesson of the day today is that a wet paper towel has magical healing abilities that surpass anything that your first aid box can offer you!
Or you could say that the lesson of the day is to be much more specific on what your children need to contact you about when they’re on your own because clearly, the ring me if you need anything or if you’re worried about anything at all didn’t apply in this case as they thought they had the situation under control!
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