Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I Lied About the Beaters.

I have been living a lie for the last 25 years. It's time I come clean about something that happened the summer before 7th grade.

My mom worked, so when the public education system was done with me, I was left to my own devices.  Warned yet again not to have friends over, I called my friend Krista to join me for some pancakes. Krista was often at my house when I wasn't supposed to have company and our covert hangouts were old hat.

Our electric beater, long since caked over with batter and stained from a Jell-O mixing accident, had been a wedding gift to my parents.  The on-off switch was broken, so you had to put the beaters in before plugging it in or risk maiming yourself.  I issued a stern warning and started the appliance whirring.

I showed Krista this trick I knew.  I held out my hand, fingers spread, and put the spinning beaters on the middle of my palm.

It tickled!  It was so much fun!

I urged her to try it, which of course she did because, you know, kids...

I took the beaters back and tickled my own hand with it again.  She did something goofier than what I was doing, which caused me to laugh and turned my attention away from my hand.  That is until searing pain shot up my arm and I realized the middle finger of my left hand was jammed in between the two beaters.  It was all twisted up, the beaters pushing outward from one another, still attempting to knead my digit.  I screamed and tried to pull my finger back out, but it was impossible.  Because the on-off switch was broken, our attempts to stop the beaters from trying to spin were futile.

Finally, rational thought prevailed.  Krista remembered that one could stop an electrical appliance by pulling the cord from the wall.  The pressure pulling my finger deeper between the beaters lessened.  We pulled and tugged frantically, but I was stuck.  Pressing the release button that should have shot out the beaters, but they wouldn't budge.

I was starting to panic.  My mother was going to kill me.

Eventually we realized the way to get my finger out was to slide it down toward the handle while pushing the handle against my body.  After a few agonizing minutes, my finger dislodged.

We watched in horror as it turned red, then purple, and swelled up around the slit-like puncture wounds the beaters left. It seemed like I could bend it, sort of, except for the swelling.  I decided it was probably not broken.  I decided I should not seek medical attention.

I also decided we would not tell anyone what happened.  We would say that I accidentally plugged it in before inserting the beaters and that's how my finger got caught.  I didn't want anyone to know that I nearly broke my finger in an electric beater because I was stupidly tickling my own hand with it.

All through school, to the best of my knowledge, Krista kept my secret. But I can remain silent no more.  To every one who asked how I mangled my finger, I lied to you. I'm sorry.

The scar I bore for years?  The beaters.  The fact that I only have feeling in one half of that finger?  The beaters.  The reason I tend to flip people off with only my right hand?  The beaters.

It's all because of those beaters.

But it really did tickle...




Edited to add:  This post was selected as an Editor's Pick!


36 comments:

  1. oooooh man! too funny-- now, today. then? OUCH! :)

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    1. If I wasn't in so much pain, I'd have thought it was hysterical then too!

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  2. Woooooooow!!! I cringed reading this...but it's a funny story lol.

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  3. The hand-beater maiming has always been one of my greatest fears. Like Tomekha, reading this made.me.cringe. Nice job capturing the moment.

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    1. I'm still a little afraid of it, I'll be honest.

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    Replies
    1. Wow, thank you so much for letting me know! What would I do without you?

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  5. Advice applicable in many situations: Don't go sticking your fingers where they don't belong. Even if it tickles.

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  6. Ouch! I was going to make pudding today, but I'm suddenly afraid of the hand mixer. And now you can't flip a double bird. Damn beaters.

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    1. Did you end up making the pudding? I'd hate to be responsible for a pudding-less household.

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  7. Awesome. I am glad you came clean and I am so happy this wasn't about those fake egg things called Beaters. THis is much better.

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  8. My husband's brother totally did this. But worse--he stuck his whole hand in on purpose, just out of curiosity. They had to take his hand (still in the beaters) to the emergency room and it took like 30 minutes to separate the two. Somehow, nothing broke. :) So I have a special kinship to this story. Love it.

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    1. Whole hand sounds SO much worse! Sometimes I really scare myself with the things I think about doing just out of curiosity.

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  9. oh man! you were beat by the beaters!! that's terrible! and you really can keep a secret!

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  10. OMG my family still gives me crap about doing this. I am 50 . Its time to stop already. Of course it goes hand in hand with the time I stuck a bead up my nose and had it surgically removed.

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    1. Oh - Ouch! I can't imagine how much that had to hurt...

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    2. I guess kids really do silly things!

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  11. That's why we have two hands. If we injure one we can still flip people off with the other.

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  12. Oh, honey! Ouch!!

    My stupid kid trick was testing the iron to see if it was hot by touching it. With all five fingertips of my right hand. Even though they blistered and hurt like crazy, I didn't let anyone know what I'd done because I was 10 and far too old to touch a hot iron out of stupidity.

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    1. There is a chance I might have touched the iron, too. I mean, how else can you find out how hot hot things are?

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  13. Hahaha! This was both funny and visceral - I cringed while reading.
    I'm glad you came clean, though.

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  14. LOVE! Love you you show us the mixer, don't tell us it was just 'old." Great title, great ending :)

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  15. KIDS. The things we almost get away with . . .

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  16. Yikes, ouch. My sister and I have a secret that we have been keeping also for about 15 years now that we always consider coming clean on. Sometimes we think that we were both pretty young, and there's no way my parents would care. But other times we think that there is no statute of limitations on certain crimes...

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  17. I have not one but TWO stupid kid tricks, and both involve the hideous practice of smoking. But I didn't smoke.

    My Dad smoked back in the day, and I had the task of emptying his ashtray into the garbage. (We kids also got to run the the store with two bucks to get him two packs of smokes and keep the change to buy ourselves candy, but that's another story.) I was told to never blow into an ashtray, but did I listen? No. Temporary blindness.

    And then there's the time that Russell and I were playing in his family's car. Don't ask me why we were playing in their car parked in their driveway. We were. It made sense at the time. So he shows me how the cigarette lighter works. Fascinating! He warns me not to touch the glowing orange inside part. But do I heed this warning? Of course not. I had a wicked burn that melted my fingertip into a partial impression of that concentric circles pattern of the cigarette lighter. Go, me.

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    1. I touched the lighter once too. I wanted to see just how hot things were that glowed orange. The answer is really, really hot.

      I cannot picture you doing these silly things. You were the older, wiser one on the block!

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