I wanted to be a doctor when I was growing up. I had big dreams of setting up shop in the middle of nowhere, delivering babies at the crack of dawn and being paid for my services with live chickens and smoked hams.

I watched a lot of Little House on the Prairie growing up.

It didn’t take long for me to change my tune and adjust my dreams when I realized just how much time and hard work it would take to become a doctor of medicine, a saver of lives. At 17, the last thing I wanted to do was commit to another eight to ten years of schooling when I could easily buy a lap top and write internet porn to support myself.

(I’m totally kidding. Or at least I am if my MIL is reading this.)

One of the deciding factors in me not going to medical school was discovering how squeamish I was. While my own blood didn’t bother me, anybody else’s body fluids did. Immensely and disproportionately. I couldn’t…can’t handle the sight of anybody’s wet and sticky substances leave their body.

It creeps me right out.

Which just made the fact that I gave birth to a handicapped child who liked to share is copious amounts of body fluid with me even more ironic.

I sucked up my distaste for blood, saliva, vomit, snot and what ever else leaked from Bug on an alarming frequency because I had to. Someone had to be the grownup in our relationship and my birth certificate demanded it be me.

I rose to the occasion and did what had to be done because he was my child and because quite simply, his life depended on it.

Yet, I’ve also been known to hide in the bathroom with my eyes tightly shut and humming “lalalalalala” as Fric and Frac come in to have a gaping wound fixed. “Go see your father! He’s magical. He’ll make it all better!”

Ya. My parental skills rocks.

Thankfully, there hasn’t been many emergencies that would test my squeamish boundaries in all the time I have been a parent.

This doesn’t mean I don’t live in fear of said moments. Or that my children and my husband don’t lie in wait to pull a prank on the pansy living in their midst.

Because there is nothing funnier than watching me turn sheet white, while running from the room saying “Don’t show me, I don’t want to see your blood!” as I go hide in a dark corner and berate myself for my weakness as my loved ones slowly bleed to death in my imagination.

Totally funny. Asshats.

Last night was one such prank. After spending a lovely romantic evening with my darling Boo, where he massaged my feet as we watched season one of Heroes, we decided to take our romance to a more private venue (behind our locked bedroom door) and do what married couples like to do when alone in the dark with a big bed at their disposal.

(I had forgotten how novel bedtime could be when one isn’t simply crawling under the sheets alone with a fat hairy dog to fart in one’s face for company.)

After a bout of nightly romance, Boo padded off to his bathroom while I luxuriated under our sheets, waiting for his return. I was half asleep when I felt the mattress shift as he slid into bed next to me.

“Tanis?” he whispered as his hand lightly rubbed my shoulder.

“Go away Boo. You already got lucky once tonight. Leave me alone,” I complained as I shrugged his hand off me.

“Once is never enough,” he purred in my ear as I slapped at his hand.

“Go to sleep and leave me alone,” I groaned and buried my head into my pillow.

“I need you to feel something for me,” he whispered.

“Boo, I’m not feeling anything for you. Go to bed,” I commanded, getting more and more irritated with him with each second that ticked past. Sheesh. I mean I just got all bendy for that man. Didn’t that earn me a free pass to sleep?

“Tanis. I’m serious. When I went to the bathroom I noticed a growth by my leg,” he whispered worriedly.

That got my attention as visions of tumors danced before my eyes.

“What?” I half-whispered, half-shouted.

“Give me your hand, I need you to feel it and tell me if I should be worried,” he said as he tried to grab my hand.

“No freaking way! I’m not touching it! Why didn’t you say something earlier! Turn the light on so I can see!” I panicked while keeping my hands firmly at my side and away from his disgusting tumor.

“Just give me your hand so you can feel it. I don’t know what to do!” he worried.

“I’m not touching it! Gross! I’ll make a doctor’s appointment for you first thing in the morning and the doctor can touch it,” I offered.

“Just give me your hand. I’m worried,” he said as he trapped my hand with one of his freakishly large mitts.

Squirming, I squealed “Don’t make me touch it!!!” as he lowered my hand to the medical mystery under the sheets.

I just about passed out from the fear of feeling some disgusting large lump threatening to take my beloved’s life when suddenly my hand landed on his growth. Funny, the growth felt like a penis, I thought, as I suddenly realized where he was going with all this growth talk.

He chuckled and crowed, “Ya. I went to the bathroom and discovered this growth by my leg. It won’t go away.”

Snatching my hand away from his love rod, I smacked him and told him just how funny I didn’t think he was.

“You freaked me out! Don’t mess with my head like that! You know I don’t do well with stuff like that!” I whined.

Boo snuggled in closer to me and smiled. “Aw baby, don’t be mad. It’s just a testament to how fine you are that my manhood won’t lie down and go to sleep with you next to me.”

Said as he slapped his willy against my thigh, in the most romantic gesture ever.

“You’re giving me a tumor,” he giggled.

Only fair since he not only gave me a heart attack two seconds earlier, but was now inducing a massive headache due to sleep deprivation and annoyance.

I love my husband. Really.

“My love for you keeps growing,” he snorted.

But sometimes a girl can go with out a tumor smacked upside her ass. Call me crazy but I think I can officially say the romance is dead.

“Come on baby, rub my lamp. The genie wants to come out of the bottle and play,” he continued.

Good thing the humor between us is still er, growing.