Family Portraits

While on my lunch today, we took Nathan up to the clinic to get an x-ray of his sinuses to make sure he didn't have an infection. Well after the terrible-twos tantrum in the lobby for about a half an hour, they finally took us back to the second waiting room. Seriously, it was just another waiting room but back behind the closed doors. There was another tv and magazines and everything. We waited there for another 10 minutes and the technician finally calls us in to get the x-rays. First Jenna takes him in and they close the door behind them. Five minutes later I'm called in for backup. Nathan is not happy about what is trying to take place. I walk into the x-ray machine room they have for kids and it seemed like I walked into a janitor's closet with 1950's vaccums and hoses computers strapped to the wall. The pipes and cables looked like they were from the personality test from the State Fair or something. So they give me a lead apron to put on. I look over at Jenna and she has a full body apron going from her shoulders down to her knees. I look at mine and it looks like a waitor's apron that just barely went from my waist to the top of my knees. At least my car keys are safe I thought to myself. Nathan had something similar to what I had on, but he's so skinny it was sagging off his waist. Then we get in front of this light that puts cross-hairs over his face and we're told to keep him still. Nathan doesn't keep still. When he's sleeping it's like Curly from the Three Stooges running around in a circle on the ground, so when he's awake it's like trying to keep an alligator still. The technician starts poppin' off x-rays like we're at a photo shoot. She eventually runs out of cartidges or gets tired of the alligator bayou show goin' on in front of her and leaves the room to check the results. She comes back and says we have to start over. Jenna gets on the other side of the x-ray machine and tries to entertain him with videos from her phone. So Nathan and I are standing there with our aprons strictly designed to protect only the parts that make us male and the technician starts firing off the particle blaster again like she sees Galaxia on her screen in the other room. She leaves the room again and I swear my arms were hot. Not in that sense where you're like "man, feelin' the burn in my muscles from restraining this child." This was more in the sense of "Is someone roasting a chicken in here?" I don't know if that can actually happen but my arms definitely felt hot. Hopefully the doctor can tell if Nathan has a sinus infection and at the same time tell me if I have any problems with my ulna, radius, humerus, or clavicle. We all left the room the same way anyone would leave a janitor's closet they were forced into, quiet and feeling violated.