We were driving down "new" 98 in Destin headed towards the Outlet Mall, just after eating dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Capt. Dave's. Beth had picked some Lantana FLOWER outside of the restaurant and given Sarah a sprig, too. After catching Sarah in the act of trying to LICK the flower, I quickly went into my lecture of "we don't lick strange flowers or plants. They might be poisonous!" Beth looks at me strangly and asks "what is poisonous." I said that it means that she (Sarah) could get very sick and die. She said "die forever?" And my response was something like "yes Beth, dead means forever." (probably a little harsh on my part and I would have NEVER had said that if I had known what was getting ready to happen.)
At this point, we pulled into the mall parking spot. She immediately opened the door and threw out the flower, closed the door and broke into HUGE, TRAUMATIC tears! My immediate reaction was that she slammed her foot or hand in the car door. She was screaming something and neither my mom nor I could understand her. I'm looking at all her extremities for injuries and saw none and FINALLY, she mustered up the words "I licked the flower!"
Beth thought she was going to die...right then and there. She was totally and utterly convinced that she was going to die from licking a flower that "might" be poisonous! I didn't know what to do to calm her down other than telling her that I didn't really know if the flower was poisonous and I'm sure she'd be fine. My mom finally got her out of the car and told her to "spit! spit it out!" After several spittings, she seems convinced that the spitting did the trick and calmed down. And during all this, I'm half laughing and half feeling completely AWFUL that my child thinks she is getting ready to die because that is what I told her! Really, I did feel terrible, and like I said, I would have NEVER, EVER said those things if I had known she'd licked the darn thing!!! It was all quite traumatic, but also a little funny! I know, I'm bad.
A little googling later, I discovered that Lantana flower is NOT poisonous, but the leaves and berries are VERY toxic! EEK!
2 comments:
you had my laughing. poor thing.
Oh poor Beth! I had to laugh though, because I've used the "D" word several times just to get through to her - it does work....too bad Beth had to take that lick! ;)
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