The family split up this past Sunday. My wife and our oldest son were busy with a church function, while my youngest son and I headed to the beach to visit my folks. We didn’t get back together until bedtime.

As I was tucking my oldest into bed, he said his stomach was hurting.

“Really?” I said. “Where?”

He pointed to the top middle of his stomach.

“Hmm. I don’t know. Have you gone to the bathroom?”

“I think it might be my appendix.”

“No.”

“But-”

“You don’t want appendicitis,” I interrupted. “It’s super painful. Your brother was in the hospital for 8 days. And when I had it? Wow. Crazy pain.”

He looked disappointed. “Oh.”

When I asked my wife, she said he’d been fine all day. She checked on him anyway, but agreed there was nothing to do about it.

This morning, his brother looked bleary-eyed at me when I woke him up. “My stomach hurts.”

I sighed. “I’d imagine. You had a lot of ice cream yesterday. Don’t worry. It’ll feel better.”

“But it really hurts.”

“I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to deal with it. I’m so far behind at work, there’s no way you can miss school today.”

I know, I know. I’m a cold, heartless daddy.

“Oh.” He straightened up. “Okay.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “We’ll skip biking into school, just to be on the safe side.”

The rest of the morning went smoothly. There were no complaints from either son – not during breakfast, not during our fifteen minute pickup basketball game, and not during the drive to school.

I think it was a case of Monday-itis… but we’ll see what happens tomorrow!