Memories of the Emergency Room

I spent an awful lot of time in the E.R. at the hospital when I was a kid. I was in there so often one year, they had someone take me aside and ask me what happened, to make sure I wasn't a battered child. I tearfully explained how I had climbed onto my desk and leaped off (I have no idea what I was thinking), gashing my chin. The hospital staff had a good laugh at my expense. All I got was this Harrison Ford chin scar.

I guess it started when I was very young. I had this fascination with my nose. Well, who doesn't at that age. One night when I was just a toddler, my parents and I were going to a Bible Study group in our apartment building. Mom came to check on me and discovered that I had a lump in my nose. Apparently I had shoved an unusually large quantity of toilet paper up my nostril. (I have no idea what I was thinking) The wad was really jammed in there and Mom couldn't get it out in time, so we went to the group anyway.

I sat there, quietly half-humming through my one good nostril. Everything was fine until I suddenly sneezed. The thing in my nose shot out into the middle of the room in plain sight of everyone. It was a huge, glistening clump of decaying paper with a trail going all the way back to my nose. Mom scooped it up and acted like nothing had happened. I escaped a trip to the E.R. that time. But not the next time.

The next time I think it was a pen lid. Up my nose that is. Had to be removed at the E.R. Then there was the time I was walking up the stairs from the basement, holding a plastic curler in my hand, when I slipped and impaled myself in the eyelid. Off to the hospital. Or when I got my first bed, instead of the crib, and I rolled out of it right onto the hardwood floor. Nose first. Back to E.R.

Then there was the time we had a house full of guests and I caught myself in my zipper and... um, maybe I'll just leave that one alone. Let's just say, it went badly.

It's amazing I survived childhood.

Someday when I have children of my own, I just know I'll be sitting in the E.R. waiting area while the hospital staff interrogate my kid and try not to laugh. I'm already prepared for it. It's inevitable.

I'll know who they got it from.
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