Z is for…Zaguan

Baby Finn was having a bit of a rash this morning so we brought him in for a check at the nearby clinic. He’s ok, btw – I was afraid it was chicken pox but turns out that it’s just a minor heat rash after a day out at Adventure Cove, phew!

Which brings me to the real point of all this. The clinic. Most family GP clinics these days come equipped with a little play area for kids and in theory, it seems like a really nice idea. You have to wait in a crowded clinic for 30 minutes with a sick, crabby toddler and suddenly, he’s not crabby anymore because he spots the toy corner – a magical wonderland of fun and happy toys.

In the real world though, these colorful little corners of fun quickly turn into a huge cesspool of germs. A major germ fest where germs of all varieties come to play. The kid with HFMD just stuck a handful of blocks in his mouth. Germs! And then there’s the other kid who just left a trail of mucus on a bunch of other toys. More germs! Basically if I were a germ, I’d make my way to one of these clinic play areas for a bit of germy toddler love.

The moment I stepped in and registered baby Finn at the doctor’s, his very high-tech toy-detection homing device immediately located the toy corner.

TOYS! LOTS OF TOYS!! MUST. TOUCH. THE. TOYS!!!

MOM YOU’RE WALKING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION…GO TOWARDS THE TOYS, WOMAN!!

I was determined not to let him go anywhere near the toys because he was there with a possibly fake case of chicken pox I didn’t need to go home with a very real case of whatever combination of germs existed in that corner.

I tried distracting him with other stuff. How about a brochure about acne? Oh look! Super fun medical books! Ok, fine, I’ll give you my equally shiny iPhone. But all he wanted was a toy from the germy toy corner. Reluctantly, I picked up the least germy-looking toy and passed it to him.

Which was when I discovered this abomination.

Looks like your basic educational alphabet abacus toy for educating kids right? Wrong.

First of all, what is this?

Also, there’s this. X is for Xebec. Xe-WHAT?

Hang on, I just googled it and apparently, it’s an ancient Mediterranean sailing ship. Okayyy.

And then finally, we come to Z. Ok, really? Out of all the wonderful Z words to choose from like zoo, zebra, zip, zero, zigzag, heck, even zugzwang and you go with zaguan. Bet you’ve never seen that word before. Unless you Spanish, then um, Nacho Libre!

Alright kids, today’s show was brought to you by the letter Z. For Za-you know what? Forget it, you’re probably never going to use that word in a sentence like ever.