My girls have grown accustomed to it, but their friends constantly remark on my maturity level, which isn’t high. My personal favorite was a comment from a friend of the eldest, who said, “Your dad is like, 7!” Very true. So with all of the time we are spending at the hospital now, I have developed a list of things my childish mind WANTS to do.

1. Every day we walk past a sleep study area to get to our room. I yearn to yell, beat on the walls, and bang pots and pans to wake everyone up.

2. My daughter has a bright-red diode sometimes hooked to her finger that measures her blood oxygen level. I am literally dying to turn the lights off and stick it in my nose and play Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. She has told me in no uncertain terms that this is unacceptable and her word is law right now.

3. I want to drape a stethoscope around my neck and diagnose someone. I don’t really want to barge into a room and play doctor. I just want to find someone, take their vital signs, and prescribe rest and that they lose five pounds before I ask for my co-pay.

4. There are so many things to ride around her that it is killing me. With the wide halls and automatic doors, an epic race seems in order. I picture it a little bit like Mario Kart.

5. I want to run out of our room and yell something like, “Code Blue! Stat!” I don’t know what would happen, but everyone seems to fly into a dither on TV.

6. Get a lab coat and join the doctors on their rounds. I could be some travelling expert from Albania and mutter things that make no sense when it is my turn to examine the patient.

I haven’t done any of these things yet. Every time I get a 7 year-old notion, my 46 year-old mind overrules it. Thus far. While this wonderful place heals the sick, there is no hope of them helping me, the incurably immature.

Photo credit: By Alex Proimos (Flickr: The Stethoscope) & H. D. Girdwood