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When I was in fifth grade, I convinced my single working mother that I was old and mature enough to stay home alone on a sick day from school.
The rub is that I wasn’t sick at all.
Taking a cue from the movie “E.T.”, I wanted to find out if the heating pad and thermometer trick really worked.
As my mom got ready for work in the morning, I put the heating pad to my forehead and held the thermometer to the lightbulb and then when I heard her coming down the hall to check on me I hid the evidence. Sure enough, my head was hot and I had a fever of one hundred and two.
Reluctantly, my mom put the work phone number on the fridge and left at about 8:30 am. I peaked my head through the blinds as she drove away, and after counting to ten once she turned the corner, I determined that my plan had worked.
My main motivation was so that I could stay home and watch television. We had just gotten cable TV for the first time - a whopping 8 channels of flicker free television. Feeling confident, I grabbed a bowl of snap, crackle, and pop and settled into the couch to binge Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction. What I hadn’t counted on however, was that at 11 o’clock, all of the stations - even the cable stations - would switch over to talk-shows or soap operas.
I had no interest in either.
So now it’s 11:30 AM and I am bored.
To occupy my time I actually chose to clean my own room.
As I was straightening my shelves, I came across a box of discarded and broken toys. Inside was a silver wristwatch that I could never wear because the pin that holds the band to the watch face had fallen out and been lost. I figured I had some time on my hands so I decided I was going to fabricate that missing pin.
I went to my mom’s sewing kit and pulled out a standard stainless steel sewing pin. And then I brought the pin and the watch to the kitchen table and carefully measured exactly how long of a cut I needed to make.
We didn’t own tin-snips, or wire cutters, or anything like that. All I had was a pair of standard household scissors. So with one hand holding the pin, and the other holding the scissors, I clamped down as hard as I could. Nothing happened. It was clear I was going to need to put some effort into it.
I rested the bottom of the scissors on the edge of the table for leverage and put all my body weight onto the upper handle. And then…the laws of physics took over. The pin slipped out, and my finger took it’s place.
I saw blood on the wall before I felt a thing.
That’s how fast it happened.
To be clear, I didn’t chop off the entire finger. It wasn’t that gruesome. But there was a good couple of centimeters of flesh missing from the tip of my ring finger and I’m pretty sure that I could see bone.
You might think that I was screaming or crying, but there was no point. I was the proverbial tree in the forest with nobody around to hear me. Or maybe you think I’m gonna call mom. Hell no. Mom thinks I’m home sick. I’m not about to blow my cover by calling her at work.
With blood flying everywhere, I ran upstairs to fetch a bandaid or some medical tape. I arrived at the medicine cabinet, but with only one good hand to work with, it was no use. I couldn’t open the damn package.
I decided to wrap my finger up about eleven times with toilet paper, as if it was gauze.
It was useless. The blood soaked through the toilet paper faster than I could even apply it.
The next best thing I could think of was to fold over a washcloth, and then double cinch it with a rubber band like a makeshift tourniquet. This was better than the toilet paper, but as I sat there looking at the dark washcloth slowly saturate with blood, I was thinking to myself — “this can’t be sanitary”.
So I went to the refrigator, pulled out a bottle of beer, and proceeded to pour Miller Lite onto my hand.
Now I’m standing in the kitchen, my hand is throbbing from the rubber band, there’s blood stains on the wall and carpet, and my washcloth wrapped hand is dripping beer all over the place.
It was time to call in support.
With the good hand holding the bad, I delicately dialed the rotary phone with my pinky.
When my mom answered the phone, I gave a blood curdling scream. Astronauts could hear me in space.
My mom raced home and took me to the hosptial.
The doctor properly cleaned me up with iodine, then put some real gauze and tape on, and shielded the entire finger with a protective sleeve. He chuckled when I told him that Miller Lite was a good sanitation solution.
We walked in the house at about three thirty in the afternoon and my mom sat me down in front of the tv to watch re-runs.
As my mom cleaned the house from the damage of the day, she praised me for how responsible I had been in the face of such danger.
She said I was “resourceful” in how I had tried to fix the watch.
And that I showed “maturity” for trying to bandage things by myself before calling her.
And that I was “level-headed” when I called her.
She never asked me about the fever that I was supposed to have had when she left me six hours before.
That’s when I realized: I had outsmarted my mom.
Which meant that as long as I could stay out of the hospital, my teenage years were gonna be a lot of fun.