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It Fixes Everything

Little kids tend to fall and bump into things quite a bit. It's what happens when you don't quite have control of your body. Heck, there is an entire class of milestones related to these gross motor skills. Put another way, that means that it's an achievement when a baby's body does roughly what the kid intended. So it's no surprise that there are a lot of bumps, bruises, and tears along the way while these kids learn these motor skills.

That means that parents and adults around these kids constantly have to find ways to tend to and reassure these same little kids. You have to pick them up, wipe their tears, get them over the shock of the fall/bump, and even clean their wounds on occasion. Sometimes, all it takes is a little bit of attention to fix a scared toddler. Heck, I've even resorted to distracting a little kid with utter nonsense to make them forget all about the event that led to the tears. Say a kid fell and he's complaining about his knee; I'll ask him if he can rotate his shoulder. It is entirely unrelated, but it works surprisingly well. If you're focusing on your shoulder, you forget that your knee is supposed to hurt.

Regardless, one of the time-honored schemes in the art of calming a kid is a kiss. I'm pretty sure this started with some ingenious mother back in the day, but the basic idea is that you kiss the body part that is supposed to be hurt. The kid gets a little bit of attention mixed in with a healthy does of affection, and that one mixture does wonders for their mental state. Suddenly, a toddler's boo boo is all gone, and that kid can face the world again.

Of course, this plan can also back fire. If a kid has learned that a kiss can magically heal all maladies, they may demand it at inopportune moments. I once saw a little girl fall on her butt, and then demand a kiss to fix her butt injury. That led to all manner of laughter, but she did not get her kiss. It just didn't seem like a good idea. I'm pretty sure the parents understood that it was innocent, but, um, no. Not going there.

Now, that's funny and all, but it's also a common gag. There are undoubtedly millions, if not billions, of parents out there who have had that same experience. It takes a special kind of luck for the reverse of that to happen. And as it turns out, I just so happen to have that kind of luck.

In my case, I was playing with some of the little kids, and I decided that they might like to fly for a bit. This time around, I wasn't surprised when the three of them demanded more turns. This wasn't my first rodeo, after all. I fully expected to fly kids for a few rounds, so I braced myself for some squatting. As it turned out, my legs and cardiovascular endurance held up fine. However, my injured wrist started to feel a little sore after a few rounds of little kid flying. I started to recognize the soreness as a potential risk to my health, so I finished out the last round and then told the kids that I had to stop:

Me: "Okay, we have to stop. This is the last time, okay?"
Kid: "Okay"
(I make the kid fly)
Kid: "Again! Again!"
Me: "No, I said that was the last time. No more, okay?"
Kid: "Why?!"
Me: "My wrist is sore. You don't want me to get hurt, do you?"

There were a grand total of three kids at the time, and two of them just nodded along. They more or less understood that I had to stop, and they let it go. The third child, however, had a stroke of genius. She walked over to me, and she planted a kiss on my wrist. After all, her parents fixed her injuries with kisses, so she figured she could do the same to me. As far as little kid logic goes, that's fairly bullet proof. I immediately started cracking up. Better yet, once the other two saw what she did, they also lined up to kiss my wrist. Mind you, one of those kids never shows that much affection. He was just trying to keep the flying game in order. That led to even more laughter.

From my perspective, though, that initial kid's innocence was on the line. If I just waved off her kiss and said my wrist still hurt, I might destroy the efficacy of her parents' go-to move. If she immediately thought to kiss me, that meant this was a big part of her world. Clearly, she had had more than one injury fixed with a kiss from her parents. So, I couldn't just dispel the ruse. I figured my wrist had at least one more round left in it, so I agreed to one last round of kid flying after they'd all lent me their magic wrist-healing powers.

My wrist held up, but as I laughed about the whole thing, I was wondering how often the kiss trick was used in reverse. I lead a rough life, I tell you.

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