March 31st, 2008 a.k.a. "the first time the boy sent the girl to the hospital".

Generally, the girl is mature for her age and has an advanced ability to reason and determine appropriateness. Then there are the other times ... like Sunday when she thought it would be fun to play with a quarter in her mouth.

Notwithstanding legal precedent, I'm pretty sure that's the definition of "an open invitation" for the boy to get into the mix. The end result being the girl has 25 cents (about 25.8 cents US) making it's way through her digestive system.

Based on some shady recommendations, thrice removed, I took her to emergency last night, where they quickly settled on "satiating the parent" vs "healing the patient". On the plus side, it was only 2 hours out of our evening and I was treated to a gratuitous show of checking her breathing and feeling around for the coin. On the negative side, I have a few days to go before I determine what exotic diseases I picked up from the denzions of our city's Children's Emergency.

For her part, I'm fairly confident that the girl was one of the few visitors who actually wanted to hang around a bit longer just so she could finish the "Eye Spy" challenge on the exam room wall. Her sole criteria was not getting a needle - which I'm pretty sure, I could have asked for and she would have received as some form of medical encore.

All in all, I was about to depart with a fairly positive attitude until the "doctor" (he had a lab coat and a badge - so I'm guessing "doctor" or "lost 1-hour photo lab tech") dropped the comment - "These days, we don't worry about anything smaller than a loonie." Odd, I didn't realize inflation and the time-value of money came into play in the practice of medicine.

I think I'll wait until the coin passes and send it as a tip.