Skillman Scuttlebutt: A Ban on Pokey Things

Squeamish readers beware!

A new family rule has been added to the Skillman household. Not that we have that many rules, the ones on the books here at home are mostly the “do what your parents say and everything will be fine” kinda rules. But after yesterday’s events we decided to add a new one: A ban on all pokey things.

The dire need for this new resolution became clear last night when Mitchell came bounding up the stairs and said, “Mom, Dad needs you really bad. He said for me to tell you to bring the tweezers.”

Hmmm.

So I casually get up and Mitchell continues, “Uh mom, I think you need to hurry.”

Okay, now I’m curious. I sprint down the stairs and pass Connor and Chloe who are both wide-eyed and pale faced. This has me a bit worried. As I turn the corner, there’s Mark on the mud room floor in serious pain holding his foot.

Turns out he’s got a splinter and quite frankly, he’s being a real baby about it. I look at his foot and there a teensy-weensy wood fiber stuck in his foot. He’s muttering something about being careful and that it feels really deep, then he practically faints upon the floor. I grab the tweezers and begin to pull out the offending object only to discover…the little fiber pinched in my tweezers, it’s the tip of an iceberg!

At this point I must tell you I’m THE go-to gal in the house where blood and guts are concerned. Gore simply fascinates me and the worse the better. While this bizarre talent is a mother's best friend, what I do not do is barf clean up…of any kind. I would have made a magnificent ER doc right up until the moment the patient puked…then I would have run! Make that, puked and run (my friend Dave refers to it as being a "Chain-Chucker"). Blood and guts though, it's my strong suit. But, due to an outbreak of events at the Skillman house, I have recently discovered my all-time achilies heal when it comes to blood and guts…The Puncture Wound! (cue foreboding music.)

Upon the casual grab of Mark’s splinter, the room about me begins to spin wildy when I discover it is a serious puncture wound. My three kids are now the shade of snow seeing my ER game face begin to fade, and Mark begins to hollar.

“Hold still,” I say, trying to summon my courage, then I bluntly mutter, “This is really gonna hurt!”

I give the thing a strong pull. To my horror I pull out almost an ENTIRE toothpick from his foot!!

To coin a funny phrase from Chloe years ago… “I felt a heebie-jeebie come up”.

I push my thumb hard on the entry site but not before massive amounts of blood gush all over my hand and floor. Mark is still yelping on the floor. Chloe has begun to cry hysterically, Connor has backed himself into the farthest point in the room, and Mitchell stands wide-eyed. Thankfully Mitchell (cue gallant and heroic music) recovered the fastest and fetched me some Neosporin and, thinking clearly under stress, grabbed a very masculine camouflage green Band-Aid instead of the pink Barbie ones.

Now, I must admit the great thing about puncture wounds (once you get passed the light-headed, everything-about-you-is-swirling, run from the room hysically screaming stage) is that if the offending object is skinny, it usually stops bleeding fairly quickly. And, now that the wound is no longer of the punture sort, being downgraded to my comfort zone of a simple blood and guts injury, I am feeling much better. Mark is not.

Mark hollers, “What the heck was in my foot?”

I quickly hide the toothpick under the mud-room rug and say, “You don’t wanna know. I will tell you later when we can laugh about it.”

The whole episode would be laughable, and it is, except for the fact that I had also suffered from the same diabolical torture just months earlier! Yes, we have ourselves an outbreak of puncture wounds around the Skillman house!

Mine was a large sewing needle that embedded the ENTIRE WAY into my leg as I knelt on the carpet reaching for something in one of the kids rooms. The whole needle! In my leg!

And no one was brave enough to pull it out but me! As I pulled it out, I had visions of that scene in Rambo, the one where he's sewing up his own arm. Me and Rambo, against the world, only he is using the needle ON his arm, I am pulling one OUT of my freaking leg. And in my scene, the room is spinning.

So, Mark and I have enacted a ban. Effective NOW. No more pokey things are to be used around the house by children…ever!

The new ban includes: