Lost in Translation

Sometimes the things our kids say can be hard to figure out.  There are things from my kids' early years that I continue to miss. My daughter was verbally precocious.  At 18 months old one of her favorite things to say was, "gogo baball." Now for those of us who knew her well we knew that she wanted to watch, for the 100th time, the live action Cinderella with Whitney Houston. Well, James is a different kid.  He was a late talker (he had speech at 12 months but lost all of it at about 14 months). We learned very quickly how to translate his communicative attempts.  Fast forward many years to today.
James often calls me from school for this or that ailment.  He has hurt toes, headaches, earaches, an allergy nose, just about anything he can invent to get out of (most likely) math class.  Today he had a headache, his ear hurt and his nose had allergies.  I told him I wasn't able to get him, told him to go back to class, made a late afternoon doctor appointment and called my husband to have him leave work early so he could drive us to the appointment. James's math teacher meanwhile emailed me stating that James left his class early because his hair was causing his head to hurt.
My husband and I met James off the bus and he looked remarkably happy for a kid with so many health woes.  He came bouncing to the car and was surprised to find that we were heading to the doctor's office.  He then indicated that the curls were too long and poking into his ears causing ear and head pain. So I cancelled the doctor appointment and told James that Dad had to come home early from work because we thought there was something medically wrong.  Anyway, the best cure for all that ailed him today was...

an EPIC HAIRCUT!!! no curls, sigh