"Hurt"

He's no tough guy, you know, despite his chipped front tooth. He's still psychologically processing Friday's big fall, which means several times a day he touches his head and says, "Hurt."

If I ask him, "Where does it hurt?" he answers "Yard," and points outside to the scene of the accident.

Sometimes he goes on to say, "Bump."

"Did you bump your head?" I ask.

"Yeah," he says sadly. Sometimes he also says, "Lip." He turned out to have two cuts on his lip, a big one inside the mouth and one on the lip itself. They're mostly healed now, which I know because today he ate pineapple for lunch -- the last few days when I tried to give it to him, he handed back the fork and said, "Hurt."

He seems nervous about hurting himself. As before, he keeps examining his hands for the healed cuts and scrapes he has had in the past, but now it seems that he's aware of the slightest discomfort -- he announces "hurt" if he sits on his foot crooked, or if he brushes against a wall. Maybe part of the excessive frequency is the excitement of having a word for it, the same way he says that every warm food is "hot"?

I guess there's one nice thing about these phantom injuries -- after them, he comes up and asks, "Hug?"