Four out of five doctors agree that Pringle's potato chips will cure most foot problems

Today, Little Miss wanted Pringle's Newfangled Potato Chips to take to school as a snack. ("Ev'ry single Pringle's po-tay-to chip, is a perfect, po-tay-to chip, they're not broken, fresh and crunchy too -- the canister keeps them that way for you") Avoiding the whole "are potato chips, even newfangled ones, an appropriate school snack" debate, I informed Her Nibs that we were in fact out of Pringle's potato chips -- or indeed, any brand of potato chips.

A snit ensued. (This will not surprise my regular readers, I daresay.)

But even the snittiest of snitters must realize that if there are no Pringle's newfangled potato chips in the cupboard, they cannot be taken to school, even if one's mother would allow one to do so.

Suddenly Little Miss was stricken with an amorphous pain. In her, um, foot.

I examined the foot, and there was no splinter, no bruise, no bump, no mark, no redness or swelling, no bug bite, no anything that might conceivably cause foot pain. Yet there she was, hobbling around. This foot had given her no trouble when she leaped out of bed onto it, nor did it seem to cause her any distress when she began stamping it upon realizing there were no potato chips.

This foot pain was so crafty, so Machiavellian, that it sometimes appeared to be in the left foot, then, in a dastardly stroke of deviousness, would cause Little Miss to limp on the right foot. (In Lyme disease, this is known as "migrating joint pain." In childrearing, this is known as "a huge pain.")

Because I am a mother who does not know how to love, I insisted that Little Miss limp down to the bus stop, turning away, in my typical not-knowing-how-to-love manner, from her obvious pain and suffering.

At the bus, she asked what would happen if her foot still hurt when she got back from school, and I told her about the very large needles full of painkillers that most emergency room nurses will inject in one's foot when a patient presents with Amorphous Pringle's Deprivation Syndrome ("APDS").

Little Miss was unmoved, but her twin brother turned white and said "Mommy, I think I'm getting nauseous."

The timely arrival of the bus put an end to our struggle, and the brave patient -- and her nauseated brother -- climbed aboard the bus to face another day of second grade.

P.S. No children were limping or nauseous by the time the bus returned. I cannot, however, vouch for the condition of their mother.