So the hub sent me this interesting article this morning out of Scientific American. Swearing when you’re hurt does help, it seems. But only with pain – not frustration (darn) or on mechanical objects (double darn), or loose hemlines (yay staplers!).

But I need to save it for really bad dings, and I need to be less clumsy:

There is a catch, though: The more we swear, the less emotionally potent the words become, Stephens cautions. And without emotion, all that is left of a swearword is the word itself, unlikely to soothe anyone’s pain.

As for pain, it looks like nursing my kids during immunization jabs was the right thing to do. They’re good laughers, and we often reduce them to giggles as a distraction from the daily bumps and thuds that raise voices and little bruises. But they wiggle enough that it won’t do much good at shot time.

Last time through, I talked to them about it and promised them a rare treat – ice cream out at an ice cream shop. For next time, though, I’ve got another idea: topical anesthetic. We had it for one round at infancy, but it never occurred to me to do it for subsequent administrations. Then I read about a numbing cream (prescription, your doctor) I could apply ahead of time – brilliant, and why didn’t I think of it before?

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