A Series of Unfortunate Events
When we
lived in the basement apartment there was a laundry area with a washing machine
of the old ringer washer style. One day
while my mother was doing the laundry the Italian landlady called her away and
Mom left me in the laundry room with the admonishment “don’t touch anything”. What did I do? I went over to the machine, and the ringer
was moving slowly round and round. It’s
smooth rolls fascinated me. I moved my
hand forward irresistibly to touch it and before you could say “Jack Robinson”
it had pulled me in all the way up to my elbow.
I screamed and screamed until Mom came running down. The machine was so old that the springs to
snap it open when something was caught did not work; or perhaps they were never
on that particular type? I don’t
know. What I do know is that I was
severely injured with torn ligaments in my thumb and pointer finger and since
my parents had very little money they couldn’t afford to take me to the doctor
or the hospital. This was in the days
before medicare came into effect. My dad
would sit with me on his lap in the evenings and rub my pointer finger and
thumb, massaging out the muscles that had been torn. He told me I should do this every night to
straighten the finger back out. I did it
for a little while but I was four years old and not as strong as Dad. So to this day I have a crooked finger.
Shortly after that incident I had
another unfortunate accident. By this
time we had moved into our own apartment.
There happened to be some kind of wire rack behind the stove which
caught my interest and I reached to pull it out. Suddenly the pot of boiling potatoes on the
stove came tumbling over and scalded my left thigh. I fell screaming to the floor and scrambled
about like a little crab until Dad caught me up and laid me in a tub with cold
running water. Later I lay on my side in
bed and Mom put some type of ointment on the leg. Once again we were unable able to afford a
doctor or hospital so Mom treated me herself.
Fortunately for all of us that was the end of my accidents.
When we
lived in the basement apartment there was a laundry area with a washing machine
of the old ringer washer style. One day
while my mother was doing the laundry the Italian landlady called her away and
Mom left me in the laundry room with the admonishment “don’t touch anything”. What did I do? I went over to the machine, and the ringer
was moving slowly round and round. It’s
smooth rolls fascinated me. I moved my
hand forward irresistibly to touch it and before you could say “Jack Robinson”
it had pulled me in all the way up to my elbow.
I screamed and screamed until Mom came running down. The machine was so old that the springs to
snap it open when something was caught did not work; or perhaps they were never
on that particular type? I don’t
know. What I do know is that I was
severely injured with torn ligaments in my thumb and pointer finger and since
my parents had very little money they couldn’t afford to take me to the doctor
or the hospital. This was in the days
before medicare came into effect. My dad
would sit with me on his lap in the evenings and rub my pointer finger and
thumb, massaging out the muscles that had been torn. He told me I should do this every night to
straighten the finger back out. I did it
for a little while but I was four years old and not as strong as Dad. So to this day I have a crooked finger.
Shortly after that incident I had
another unfortunate accident. By this
time we had moved into our own apartment.
There happened to be some kind of wire rack behind the stove which
caught my interest and I reached to pull it out. Suddenly the pot of boiling potatoes on the
stove came tumbling over and scalded my left thigh. I fell screaming to the floor and scrambled
about like a little crab until Dad caught me up and laid me in a tub with cold
running water. Later I lay on my side in
bed and Mom put some type of ointment on the leg. Once again we were unable able to afford a
doctor or hospital so Mom treated me herself.
Fortunately for all of us that was the end of my accidents. 
No comments:
Post a Comment