The other day, I was hanging out at the park, keeping a sharp ear and a lazy eye on my kids as they played with their friends.

Since I've graduated from the days of having to trail my kids to make sure they don't brain themselves on the play equipment, I've taken to kicking back on the grass under a shady tree, chattering with other moms, and taking turns yelling behavioral modifications in their general direction.

For example, two boys were getting into some rough-housing, and I turned around and made a noise like "Huh Uh UH" and then wagged my finger and yelled "NO." They had the grace to look mildly ashamed of themselves. I can see getting my ass kicked soundly in a few years by these same kids, but for now, they knocked it off. I am going to make an instructional DVD demonstrating my technique for gutteral, monosyllabic parenting. It will be a best-seller. We spend all this time telling our kids to "use their words" and I can broker peace by grunting twice and throwing a few handfuls of grass. Next big thing. Look for me on Oprah.

Anyway, so I'm sitting there swapping ER stories with two of my friends. While I've been lucky that we've only had one ER trip, my friend Kim had me in hysterics with her description of her panic when her two-year-old son sliced his forehead open. She did the prudent thing, and grabbed him in her arms, ran out the front door and started screaming hysterically in the front yard. (Honestly, this is why some of us keep reading parenting manuals. So we are prepared when an accident happens... open door, and scream. Works like a charm.)

Somehow, we got onto the topic of handy neighbors. When I was an elementary student, our across-the-street neighbor was an emergency room nurse, with six kids of her own. She was quite an asset to all the moms on our block. Anyway, I was cracking myself up, thinking about all the times that our neighborhood nurse had to put us back together. I settled down long enough to tell the story about my tenth birthday.

My mom had recently gone back to work, leaving my twelve year old sister and I at home, while my brother was at a friend's house. With no parents at home, we did what came naturally - acted like complete and utter dorks. What with my birthday and all, I decided to deck myself out in a hoop skirt and roller skates. I skated around and around on the linoleum in the kitchen, until I got hungry. When I reached into an overhead cupboard for a large jar of peanut butter, my hands slipped and the jar shattered on the counter edge.

A shard flew up and carved a good slice out of the top of my right thumb. I skated over to the sink, and felt woozy as I could see the tip of the bone. Hollering for my sister to go get Lousie (the nurse) I followed her out the door to the driveway, where I collapsed, feet pointing down the driveway, rollerskate wheels a'spinning. My hoop skirt was trapped under my butt, forcing the wide part of the hoop into the air, giving the neighbors a nice shot of my panties. I just lay there and bled, while Louise trotted across the street with her medical kit, rolled her eyes and rolled my weeping dork self back into the house.

She bandaged me up and had me ready when my mom arrived home to take me to the doctor. After twelve stitches and plenty of muffled laughter from all the adults involved, I was good as new.

While I'm telling this story, of course I had to act it out. I'm over there on the grass, miming my wobbly reach for the jar, my shaking trip to the driveway, and my hoopskirted sprawl on the pavement, when I notice that people outside our earshot are gesturing at me. Perhaps they thought I was having a seizure.

I was laughing too hard to care.