Our macho little Mario who consistently taunts us by saying “Bring It On” and wrestling us was taken down by a one inch splinter. 

He brushed his hand against the wood bannister outside and got a tiny splinter in the palm of his hand.  He came in to show me, and I told him it should be easy to get out.  He remembered back to the first splinter he got months ago – Jon had to literally hold his feet and arms down while I worked it out with a pair of tweezers.  Meanwhile he cried and fidgeted the entire time.  We were forced to take that route with him after begging him to voluntarily allow us to get it out.  He absolutely refused months ago and continued to absolutely refuse this time around.  When I approached him with the tweezers, he freaked out.  He ran away; he cried huge tears; he begged and pleaded to keep the splinter in his hand. 

I finally calmed him down after ten minutes and got him to agree to allow me to just look at it.  It took me another 10 minutes to get him to agree to allow me to use the tweezers on him, and that was only because I scared him half to death by telling him that his hand would have to be cut off if he didn’t get the splinter out.  But he would only allow me one pick with the tweezers so I could not get deep enough to get it out.  After the one pick, he grabbed his hand and rolled on his back crying “I can’t take it anymore!”  He then would plead that we must stop because the pain was too much.  Finally, he cried “I just want to die!” 

I couldn’t help but laugh.  Even Maria chuckled.  I finally got almost all of it out but there was just a small little piece that would have come out if I could have used the sharp end of a pair of scissors.  But as soon as I picked those up, he ran away yelling “Those are too sharp, mom!  Too sharp!”  After throwing the scissors fifty feet away from me to convince him I would not use them, he made his was back to me to get the final piece out.  And we did.  He got a band-aid and a big ol’ hug and within ten minutes he was begging me to wrestle him.