Samu Rodriguez

What do Samu and Alex Rodriguez have in common? Steroids. It seems my three-year-old has to take Prednisone to clear up his poison ivy. Is it a good idea to put a child who regularly jumps off the furniture and talks a mile a minute on a drug whose side effect includes mania? Well, let's see...

As a precaution, I asked my mother to babysit him the first day of administering it. Being that Zuki had a half day of school and he and his gang were meeting up at the park, I didn't think adding a pumped-up three-year-old to a group of Boys-gone-wild was the way to go. My mother agreed to call  and see if we should hook up.

I received a voicemail message from her instead and as I listened to it, I was reminded of that scene in The Incredibles where Helen is listening to the increasingly alarmed messages from Jack-Jack's babysitter. My mother's message goes, "We're on our way but Samu is acting really, really Crazy...now he's pushing me - okay -okay he's biting me now and it hurts...WHERE ARE YOU?"

We never did hook up at the park - I wound up picking him up at my mother's house some three hours later. When I got there, he was running from room to room, dumping out toys, putting them back in their containers and dumping them out again. My mother's face was that of despair.

"I have to do the laundry," she said. "He pooped all over the sheets."

I heard that happens to heroin users - uncontrollable bowel movements. I wondered if it's the same with steroids. Then I remembered how Samu's a Pooper anyway. It was probably nothing unusual even though it's his second huge dump in under 24 hours.

What was unusual was his agreeing with me that it was time to go home. Well, he did cry at first but then he did a bipolar turnaround as soon as we gave him a Capri Sun: wah-wah-wah-oh-a drink! Then he bolted, and I mean bolted, out the door skipped down the hall and launched himself at the elevator button. He missed of course, but he thought it was hysterical.

Meanwhile, my mother gave us the Jehovah's Witness goodbye: slammed the door, bolted all the locks - loudly. No, I'm just kidding. I'm sure she wanted to but instead she followed us out and headed for the Bodega, no doubt to buy two King-sized Budweisers.

It's no wonder steroids are banned from sports. It really does seem to give people super-human powers. Later that evening, I watched Samu choke-hold my husband as we tried to finish our dinner and I decided that I would give the medication three days and that's it. One, I don't think our house is covered for body imprints on the wall and two, my mother wants me to sell her the rest on the black market so she can accomplish some Triatholon-type cleaning. What the heck - she might even sweep my garage at five in the morning.