Random Thought

This just totally popped in my head.....

Remember those old wooden console television sets? No? Click here.

We had one when I was about 5 or 6 years old. Very similar to the picture, except ours had some "fancy" woodwork along the bottom-little nooks and crannies, you get the idea.

Anychildneglect, one day I was home alone for some reason that escapes me now, lying on my back watching cartoons. (Actually either I was home alone or my Dad was in a heroin nod-either way, I was unsupervised)I was absent-mindedly running my foot along the bottom of the console, when I realized my foot had slipped in one of the holes. I tried to pull my foot back out-no luck. I sat straight up and tried to work my foot out from that position-no luck. I remember not being too panicked-after all, I was little. How long could it possibly be before someone came home and found me?

Turns out-a long, long time. So long in fact that the house was pitch black when my mother finally cruised in. It's not like I could get up to turn the lights on when the sun went down. I was hysterical, exhausted, scared, and in pain. My foot was so swollen from trying to pull it out my mother had to ice it down before we could even attempt to get it free.

She ended up using Vaseline to grease my foot up and it eventually slipped out.

I'm sure this would have been traumatic for any child, but this was also right around the time that I realized bad, bad things happened in the dark in my house. I remember just being frozen with fear because the house was so dark and I couldn't see outside of the circle of light provided by the television.

I'll tell you what though-that cured me of ever trying to stick a body part somewhere where I wasn't sure if it would come back out.