TGIF

[unknownfate]

I made it through another week. It was a wacky one. Why just today, we had a four year old girl go to the hospital. She had rolled up a a piece of paper and shoved it in her ear, and then came crying to me. Luckily for her, I didn't have any tweezers, because my first impulse was to sit on her, pin her head still, and go digging for it. That's how most of my childhood injuries were dealt with. 'Twas many a time that I grimaced at the hearth rug whilst a parent pinned me flat and extracted whatever sharp thing I had been punctured with.



Parent: And WHYYY were you barefoot in a pile of old barbed wire fencing???
Me: (wincing) I don't knowwwww! It was a shortcut!
Parent: And WHEN was your last tetanus shot???
Me: (clawing at floor) Last Wednesday! Remember the ow! rusty nail in my heel?
Parent: Some people would've learned from that!
Me: I just- OW!OwOw!
Parent: Ok. It's out. Alcohol time. (applies liberally)
Me: GRHHHHH!
Parent: (Getting up) Done. Put a band-aid on it and get some shoes on.
Me: It'll hurt to wear a shoe on it!
Parent: Wear flip-flops.
Me: I lost em in the barbed wire pile.
Parent: Aren't you supposed to be in the gifted program?
Me: What's that got to do with barbed wire?
Parent: What indeed.




But anyway, the poor child was sent to the school nurse. (We have one now! Woo!) She was unable to reach the paper also, so the girl was sent to the hospital. One of her classmates was all bug-eyed and making scissor-finger movements at his own ear.

"Will they cut her open?" he asked.

"Maybe," I said. "But probably not. Probably -" And here I curled up the fingers of one hand to be an earhole and with the other hand I started making weird, medical utensil-type gestures with the other. "What they'll do is get some SPECIAL tweezers..." By then I had a rapt audience of hip-high people. I rammed the utensil-gesture hand into the earhole hand. "And REACH WAY IN and PULL IT OUT!"

"Oooooh!" they said. Having their complete attention is a rare thing, so I took the opportunity to advise them all to NEVER, EVER stuff things in their ears, noses, or wherever. It's easier to remember stuff when you have graphic visuals.

Comments

I needed that real bad

[eternal-chimera.livejournal.com]

:) thank you.

[casinoland.livejournal.com]

I'm luck, I only had to have a couple dozen medical extractions before I moved on to broken bones which were my specialty. Nothing says love like "oh it's not that broken" or "it's just a few fingers"
or "there isn't anything they can really do for broken toes" or "let me get the steri-strips so you don't have to get stitches" and of corse "well we'll just see if you get pneumonia after you broke all those ribs"