Lies my father told me.

Ezra has a routine ear infection so I had to take him to the pediatrician yesterday morning. In the car he asked me what I looked like as a kid.

"Well, your Grandma was a big fan of characters called Raggedy Ann and Andy..."

When we got to the doctor's office I looked up Ragged Andy costumes on my phone and clicked on one of the most ridiculous-looking results from a Halloween shop. "Kind of like that," I said. "She died my hair red, and drew dots on my face every morning." Ezra keeps his cards close so when he laughs at something it kind of breaks away from him. Not only is it an endearing mannerism but the fleeting moment of genuine bonding, sharing amusement over an apparently privileged piece of embarrassing information, almost broke my resolve.

There was a long wait for the doctor and the sterile examination room left nothing to occupy kids' or attention-deficient adults' attention. "I wonder if they'll do an eye-polishing today."

"What's that?"

"Well they're supposed to do it every couple of years for kids. There's this glass tube with a vacuum attached. They hook it right here (I pointed to his orbit) and it sucks your eye out into the tube. Schluuuup. Then they can clean it off. To get it back in they reverse the vacuum and it blows back into your socket."

"Really?" he asked, eyes wide, lips pulled down in an anxious, mortified bow, "You're laughing." I hadn't been able to keep a straight face that time.

Money's tight so I'd asked the sleepy-eyed pediatrician for the cheapest possible antibiotic, which was a pill. Waiting at the pharmacy I told Ezra I should warn him, it was a suppository.