Me: Um, hi, I think my daughter may have swallowed a crayon. Or part of one.
(We were drawing -- Elsa and Clio and me. Well, sort of. They've just gotten to the point where they vaguely understand the concept of scribbling. They mostly prefer putting the crayons in their boxes and taking them out again. Anyway, Elsa was standing on the paper -- a cut-open paper shopping bag, actually -- and I thought it would be fun to trace her foot. But not long after I did, she became mildly distraught. I thought it was because I got some crayon on her toenails. Not that this is the sort of thing that would normally bother her, but who knows? Maybe the girl just didn't dig blue toenails, right? It's a little out there, a little weird. So I wiped off the crayon as best I could, but she kept whimpering, and it gradually escalated to crying. Then she was putting her fingers in her mouth and making "yuck" faces, much like she did after she ate dishwasher detergent.)
PC: She'll be fine. Crayons are non-toxic.
(Phew! Yes, that's right! In fact, I've known this for as long as I could read. I remember looking at Crayola crayon boxes and seeing those words, front and center: "Non-toxic." (And then something about different brilliant colors...) And I remember asking my mother what it meant. In fact, I've probably known that crayons are non-toxic longer than I've known that bees die when they sting you and no two snowflakes are alike. Not that this stopped me from calling poison control...)
Me: OK, but she seems pretty unhappy. She's been crying for like ten minutes, and she's sort of hiccuping and burping now. And she just looks really uncomfortable.
(In fact, she'd squatted down in a corner and was looking red-faced and slightly bug-eyed, almost like she was trying to poop. I tried to give her water, but she wasn't interested. Clio, meanwhile, had started whining in sympathy. Which made it hard to hear the poison control lady when she said....)
PC: She'll be fine. Crayons are non-toxic.
(Right. We established that. When I was four.)
Me: But is it possible that she'd feel sick after swallowing one? I mean, I don't know for sure that she did swallow a crayon. It's just sort of a theory. We were drawing, and I was tracing her foot, and then all of a sudden she got upset. But now she's making these kind of weird sounds, and....
PC: Is the crayon caught in her throat? Is she choking on it?
(Yes. My daughter is choking on a fucking crayon, and I'm here talking on the phone with you.)
Me: No. She's not choking. She's just...I mean, I'm just wondering, would swallowing a crayon make her this unhappy?
(Even if it was a sucky, undesirable color, like burnt umber, or that stupid "cornflower" that barely shows up?)
PC: It probably just didn't taste good. Try giving her a popsicle or a drink of water or something. She'll be fine.
Me: OK. Thanks. A sphincter says what?
PC: What?
Me: Exactly.
(Within five minutes, Elsa had recovered completely and was snuggling in my lap pointing and yelping at pictures of bunnies and fish. I still don't know whether or not she actually swallowed a crayon. We'll see if a brilliant-colored, non-toxic little something shows up in her diaper tomorrow...)
Elsa in happier times, eating yogurt and...something else I can't identify. But definitely not crayons.
