“Most things that I worry about never happen anyway.”
Tom Petty
“I think I swallowed some magnets,” he said.
There are sentences that instantly change the chemistry of a house. That’s one of them.
My brain started sprinting before I could stand up.
You think you swallowed some magnets? What does that even mean? How many? When? Why?
He was calm. Too calm.
Twelve years old, sitting at the kitchen counter like he’d just casually mentioned running out of milk.
I grabbed my phone and typed the words no parent should ever type: magnets swallowed child emergency.
The search results were unanimous: Go to the ER. Immediately. Do not pass go. Do not collect your composure.
Within minutes, the house turned into a low-level emergency drill.
My wife grabbed her coat. I couldn’t find the keys. The dog thought it was a walk.
Moses looked mildly curious, like he was watching an episode of his own life.
The drive was quiet except for the sound of me catastrophizing in real time.
Magnets, I learned from Google, can tear through organs if they connect inside your body.
This was not reassuring.
When we pulled into the hospital lot, the morning light was too bright for how panicked I felt.
Everything suddenly seemed absurdly normal.
We walked into the ER, checked in, and were handed a clipboard as if this were an ordinary errand.
The waiting room was its own dimension—white noise, stale air, and the constant flicker of muted television.
Time slowed down.
Every parent there looked like they’d been awake for a week.
At first, Moses was fine—swinging his legs, scrolling his phone.
Then he started to ask questions.
“Am I going to be okay?”
His voice was small in a way that split me open.
I told him yes, absolutely yes, while trying not to picture the Wikipedia diagrams of intestines I’d just seen.
He set his phone down.
For the first time all night, he looked worried.
And suddenly, I wasn’t thinking about magnets anymore.
I was thinking about how quickly love can turn into fear.
How one calm sentence can flip the world upside down.
Eventually, a nurse called his name.
We followed her down a hallway that smelled like antiseptic and too much coffee.
He sat on the exam table swinging his legs again, just like before.
The X-rays were quick. The waiting after was not.
Then the door opened.
A doctor stepped in, holding a clipboard like it contained the meaning of life.
He cleared his throat. “No magnets found, Moses.”
For a second, I couldn’t tell if that was good or bad news.
Then it hit. Relief. Shoulders dropped. Breath released.
The doctor looked up over his glasses.
“Do you have any idea where the magnets might be?”
Moses thought for a moment.
Then, with the sincerity only a twelve-year-old can muster, said,
“In my balls?”
The doctor laughed so hard he had to take off his glasses and wipe his eyes.
I started laughing too, the kind that shakes loose the fear that’s been sitting in your chest all night.
Even my wife laughed—the nervous, exhausted kind that sounds a little like crying.
The doctor, still chuckling, asked, “Moses, are you sure you swallowed them?”
Moses shrugged. “Hmm… maybe not?”
And just like that, the whole morning deflated into absurdity.
Hours of panic, a hospital visit, X-rays, all undone by two words: maybe not.
On the drive home, the car was quiet again.
This time, it was the good kind of quiet—the kind that follows laughter and relief and the faint smell of hospital soap.
We didn’t say much. There wasn’t much to say.
Just a family heading home, lighter than we’d left, grateful for the things that didn’t happen.
We spent the whole morning chasing a crisis that never existed.
Which, if I’m honest, feels like most of life.
