For no reason other than I remembered it another little adventure from the innocent days and a lesson in how to scare your mother half to death. I would have been 9 at the time and had just moved up to the top class in Primary school.
A couple of weeks into the new term we had our first craft lesson which was making lino cuts. We all dutifully gathered round the teacher’s desk for a demonstration of the technique and a stern lecture on safety, always point the cutting tool away from you. Then we trooped back to our desks now armed with a small square of lino and a wickedly sharp cutting tool. Drawing was never a great skill of mine so it took me quite a long time to get a design worked out and then I was running short of time to get the cutting finished.
I’m aggressively right-handed and my left hand as always been weak so try as I might I couldn’t get the lino to stay still while I gouged out the design. In the end impatience got the better of me and without thinking of the consequences held it firmly by the edge furthest away from me, right in front of the cutting tool. Moments later my right hand slipped and with deadly accuracy I stabbed the tool straight into my thumb, over halfway through. There was pandemonium as other kids tried to avoid being sprayed while I waved my hand around in panic making everything worse, getting blood all over my shirt, shorts, face and legs. Eventually the teacher got me to stay still long enough wrap his handkerchief round my thumb before dragging me to his car for a quick drive to casualty.
I must have looked like the victim of a knife wielding maniac and poor Mum nearly had a fit when I arrived home covered in blood from head to foot and sporting a huge bandage on my thumb but fate has a way of getting back at silly boys, not being allowed to get the bandage wet meant that I had ten days of assisted bathing to suffer.
Sometimes I wonder how I survived long enough to have all those adolescent problems.
Love
Kids and sharp stuff – a recipe for blood and gore!
I think it’s universal.
My mother once told me she had me brought to the hospital for freak accidents once p year in average. I can recall accidents caused by bikes (several of those), sledges, skies, sharp tools, blunt tools, any tool, fishing hooks, rock climbing, car doors… and most of all, my own stupidity and total lack of thinking of consequences. In away, learning this is probably what growing up is about.
So, I’m not totally surprised by that cutting incident of yours. I mean, equip a bunch of kids with sharp cutters – what do you really expect to happen??
Love
Daniel
And it always happensd in slow motion. You’re watching that sharp thing headed right at your thumb and you simply cannot stop it!
I said an Ouch as I read this, for your childhood wounds, and mine!
Bob
That’s so true, like a bad movie scene, in this case with technicolor gore thrown in!
Daniel
You were accident prone as well? I feel a bit better now, I was the only one in my class and something like that happened at least once a term
Love
Mac
Who on earth thought that allowing sharp tools in class was a good idea? I’m just surprised you were the only one!!!
My step dad had to bath me after a bad accident for quite a long while, and I don’t know who was more embarrassed, him or me. Being 9 is a tough age, you float between still being a little kid, and knowing you are not quite a child anymore…..