# Charlie gets staples By [FatherofZoomers](https://paragraph.com/@fatherofzoomers) · 2023-01-15 --- It was a nice night, had gotten home late from work in the darkness, to sit down to a hot meal. Afterwards me and Bernie opened the chess board - I opened with the Ruy Lopez and things were going well. I had mentioned prank week - a creation of Gengen who loves pranks - whether it was still going - as I had one planned. Should have kept my mouth shut, for as the Chess game went on, Charlie and Gengen snuck upstairs to toilet paper bernie’s room. Charlie tried to exit the scene by crawling under the stairs which form the back of his closet and ended up cutting his shin, a good one. Ran down the steps saying “ o boy o boy”, and it only took one look to know, that yes, this was going to be a hospital trip. Moll started bandaging up and I got things ready to make the trip to town. Gengen came up and asked if she could go. I think it was her idea to toilet paper the room, so she felt a little guilty, but also she just wanted to be there for her brother. I told her no, she had school tomorrow and it would turn into a late night - but she begged with that earnestness in her eyes - and I couldn’t shut down her desire to be there for her brother. Picked up wee Charlie and carried him out in my arms to the backseat… and off we went. There is something special about getting stitches. I don’t know how many runs I’ve had to take over the years, but it has been a few. And the trip, like the scar is never forgotten. There is something utterly beautiful about the experience, too, to be injured and hurting and have people clean the gash, sew the skin together, bandage it up carefully and send your way in such better spirits compared to the original trauma, knowing that the wound is on its way to healing. Doctors, what a great things…. to help people heal. Not just stitches, but he ended up getting staples. We had prepared him mentally for a glue job - as it seeems that for the past 15 years every time we had an ER trip it would get fixed with the glue, but this cut was too deep - and the staples gun was brought in. Gengen heard them talking outside and looked at me in pain… staples? Before the staples applied they had to stick a needle in to the gash. I laid across his chest on the bed… his face and precious little body shook violently as they inserted the needle into the cut… real physical pain. It was hard. I looked over at Gengen when it was over and she was bawling crying. Charlie took it pretty well, and was amazed at the fact that he could watch them staple his leg together and feel no pain. Nine staples. At the end though, he hopped on the hospital bed walking a little bit taller, looking forward, I assume, to showing his staples off at school - which isn’t something you get to do every day. We got a bag of doritos as a treat for the ride home. It was a night to go in the memory vault. The idea of what a man needs to be content I often think about. While on some levels we live a simple lifestyle on the mountain - think of all the things that we do have… a house to live in, food to eat and water to drink, electricity and internet….employment that provides a modest amount of income for spending… a car that provides transportation…. and not only that but also access to education for the children… and health-care. I use the word poverty…while there is this tremendous baseline of things that we have ….and the urge is for me to try to extrapolate the essential things a human family needs - and go about writing economic/political essays on what we need… those basic things… to be content. And there is something valid about the fundamental needs people have. Yet when my thinking goes towards “ the system” ( I love the think about the “system”). And I fantasize about a better “system” - alas, in my broken-ness- I have to sadly realize that this too - systemic change - ( and I still harbor strong hopes that we do have have systemic change ) is just another delusion, a comforting lie I have told myself for years - thinking ( and there are many nuances to this conversation ) that we alone are going to fix this world. Ohlson Mountain, January 2023 --- *Originally published on [FatherofZoomers](https://paragraph.com/@fatherofzoomers/charlie-gets-staples)*