The Blissful Ignorance of Childhood

This is probably just filler. Yep, almost definitely. But I'm obsessive, and can't leave big gaps without explaining them, so consider this entry more for me than for you... You probably want to just skip on to the next entry where it starts getting "good" again. Go ahead, I won't tell.

After having had my foot mined for silicate gold (e.g. glass), I generally found doctors pretty scary. They weren't, mind you, but boy, I knew they could be, and so I was going to be ready, no matter what! 😕 Right -- kids don't need to be "ready", so in fact, what I was doing was obsessing and worrying myself into a phobia. Pretty cool, eh?

For the next few years, the whole "scary doctor" thing started fading. Bad things rarely happened, and even when they did, they weren't as bad as I expected. One time we came back from a big trip somewhere, we had a big pile of mail waiting for us at home and my father always went through it right away, so I helped. I was in grade school by then so my dad even trusted me with his pocket knife to open up the more resistant things, like packages. Never taught me to always cut away from myself though, so this one time when I cut towards my left hand holding the box the knife cut the tape and kept going -- into my left wrist.

Fast forward 20 minutes holding my wrist under ice cold water and the blood continuing to gush, and it was another scary trip to the ER! Or not. By the time we got there it actually stopped bleeding...it seems that water, even cold water, keeps the blood from clotting, since all the clots keep getting washed away. Go figure. Had I been half-an-inch further to the right and it would've been an artery, but since it wasn't, I got some superglue'd tape to keep it shut and a nice big bandage. No pain, no needles, yay!

Got a few shots at the pediatrician from time to time I think, but really nothing that bad. Another memory I got a shot, then had to stop at a different office in the medical building where they did a blood test. Not even a venipuncture, just a poke in my finger. Still don't know why they didn't do this at the pediatrician, but whatever. I thought it all hurt like hell that day, but mostly forgot about it soon after because, c'mon, let's get real, nothing happened.

And so, getting pretty good at this whole "doctor" thing, it stopped being such a scary thing. No longer did I worry that a visit to a doctor or medical office would lead to some terrible torture being imposed on poor unsuspecting me.

Until, from a completely different direction, it did.

Still reading? I hope not -- when it comes to expository writing, I really do have diarrhea of the mouth. Or, at least, the fingers. The worst thing is that it seems so smooth and rhetorically clever when I type it that I don't even realize I need an editor with a huge red pen until it's much too late. Sorry. But in all fairness, I did warn you.