Don’t deny it. Every kid envied the classmate in a cast. All that delicious attention! The possibility of real danger – even death! The doting and deferential treatment! Why, even glasses on a fourth grader elicited a sort of wow factor: Look at me! I stand out!
This strip was the product of my accident-prone* son’s adventure climbing up to the cookie and treats cabinet when he was about six. We had a traditional coil-ring stove top, the non-smart appliance technology of yesteryear (er, the 90s). When you turned the thing off it stayed hot for quite a while, so it was never, ever to be trusted. As with an old iron, you just assumed it was waiting for you: the test was a little spit or the quickest possible tap – hey, it worked for our grandmothers, and they had to rely on gas and pilot lights! Tick tick tick BOOM, potentially, every time they boiled an egg.
So, in his cookie quest (and we weren’t in any way sweets tyrants; go ahead! You’re young! I lived on Ring Dings all through high school and Dad ate like livestock!), he hoisted himself onto the kitchen counter by placing the flat of his right hand on a still-hot coil. The sheer horror of his scream sent both Husband and I tearing downstairs and instinctively thrusting his hand under a cold running tap. Relief, to some degree, and a trip to the ER, of course, ensued. He was treated by medical staff who, fortunately, recognized a childhood accidental calamity when they saw one, and he was sent home with a burn that looked like the iconic scene from “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (you know the one; that weird, bespectacled Nazi grabs the amulet out of the fire and screams, evoking the melting to come).
And so, he had the result of his folly/bravery on his hand and it fascinated his classmates; a war story from the rug rat graduate frontlines. He’s in his 20s now and I don’t know if the physical scars remain (doubt it, given that we shed our skins like snakes, and he was six at the time).
But he went on to a prolific career in scaring us to death, followed by many, many visits in the night to the ER. Well, boys, amirite? Wait’ll I tell you about the stitches . . .
*Can someone cite a boy who doesn’t have this impulse?