How not to start a conservation with your mother

I feel pretty proud of myself that I am not that obsessive, worrying type of mother. I thought I was pretty cool under most circumstance.

When my almost two year-old was standing at the sliding glass door with blood covering his face and needed 30 stitches, I calmly grabbed a towel covered his head, instructed my daughter to call her dad and then stood on the driveway holding him until Garth came and picked us up. I then laid on him for an hour to hold him still while the plastic surgeon stitched him back together. I was calm.

When the same child fell off a couch I let him walk around on a broken foot for two weeks before taking him to the doctor and finding out his foot was broken. (I know that sounds cruel but it was a couch a foot and a half off the ground for heavens sakes.)

When my daughter was head butted in soccer and had her lips smashed into her braces and her jaw dislocated, she pulled her lips out and a father on the team realigned her jaw, we rinsed out her mouth and she continued to play. No wasted trip to the hospital and I didn't freak out.

When the same daughter informed me that she had repelled off a train tressel hundreds of feet high, in the middle of the night, with trains going across, I didn't freak out. Just reminded her that that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do.

When my son was sent to live in Bogota, Colombia for two years, I didn't freak out. And when he told us how he had been bitten by a dog, held up at gun point, chased by gangs, and almost choked to death, I didn't freak out.

When my 16 year-old called to tell me he had wrecked my car and was in his fourth accident in less than a year - I did freak out. Well, wouldn't you have?

Overall, I feel as though I have a pretty good track record, so when my son who lives 600 miles away calls and starts a conservation with, "Okay mom, don't freak out." What are you supposed to think? Obviously, you think of accident, right? But how bad can it be because my child is talking to me on the phone, so he isn't dead yet. But of course, your mind races way at a thousand miles a second thinking of all the worst things that could have happened.

He then proceeds to tell me that he hit heads with another kid and has a gash on his forehead that needs stitches. Is that all? All those visions of mangled cars, broken limbs, or severed fingers for just a cut that needed stitches! Doesn't he know his own mother? Doesn't he know I'm not the "freak out" type of mom?

I guess not.

Maybe I ought become that "freak out" mom type and show him just how lucky he has been all his life.