Laura on Life... ‘Well’ days

The second grade teacher called me from school the other day. She told me that I needed to come and pick up my child.

“I think he’s sick,” she said. “He says he’s hot and he’s not feeling well.”

When I arrived at the office, he was sitting in a chair with a big grin on his face, looking decidedly...not sick.

I looked him over with a mothering eye. Bright eyes, pink cheeks, sitting straight up and, of course, there was… that grin.

“Your teacher told me you were sick,” I said.

“Yep. I am. Sooo, let’s go!” he chirped. “Can we go to the playground before we go home?”

I rolled my eyes. “Well, sick children usually want to go home and lay down,” I said.

He thought about that a minute and then asked, “What if I feel better when we get home?”

“Are you expecting a miraculous recovery?”

He had clearly not thought this little scheme through to its inevitable conclusion.

I knew how he felt. There were days when I just wanted to chuck it all and do something crazy. Nothing too off-the-wall, just something different.

So I understood my child’s reasoning, but his method left something to be desired. I couldn’t in all good conscience let him get away with that because if it worked, he’d tell his teacher he was sick three times a week.

There are a lot of really good reasons for adults to take a “sick day.” Maybe the fish are biting, or there is a sale at JC Penney. Maybe it was simply a beautiful day. Isn’t that what sick days are for? We should call them “well days” not sick days. When I’m sick, I go to work. Why waste a perfectly good sick day being sick? After all, when I’m miserable, it doesn’t really matter where I’m miserable. But when the sun is shining, the temperature is perfect and I haven’t ridden a bicycle since I took off my last child’s training wheels, it’s time for a “well day!”

Really, the only difference between a well day and vacation day is that vacations are planned. Well days are gloriously spontaneous! How you use them is the difference between the living and the walking dead.

I know people who have worked at the same company for decades and have never used any sick time or vacation time. They must really love what they do.

Me? Every now and then I just want to be reminded of what it was like to be a kid who pretends to be sick just so he can go to the playground.

You can reach Laura at lsnyder@lauraonlife.com.

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