I’ll never forget the time I slit my hand on the bathroom stall at school in third grade….

It all began when my friends Madison, Claire, and I decided it could be fun to climb over the bathroom stall walls of the girls’ bathroom at school when we were in third grade.  We were supposed to be changing out of our school uniforms, but the three of us got distracted when Madison began singing the song, “Do the Monkey,” by The Wiggles.  One thing about Madison is that she can do one of the best monkey faces I’ve ever seen, and her favorite animal is also the monkey, so it all works out.  She loves imitating monkeys too, so she was swinging on the rod at the top of one of the stall doors.  Meanwhile, Claire was in the last stall getting changed in the last stall, and I was watching Madison and basically doing anything and everything to avoid getting changed and moving on to my homework.  (Back then, that was my tactic for putting off doing my homework.)  I was always a hyperactive child, and tended to be more than willing to do something slightly dangerous.  I was showing Madison something I had seen one of the sixth graders doing (which was climbing over the walls of the stalls), when I slipped climbing up one of the stalls and slit my finger and palm on the one of the leftover holes from the toilet paper holder.  (All of the bathroom stalls in all of the bathrooms at school had them.  They were leftover from when they had moved the toilet paper holder over.)  I didn’t even feel it originally; I just saw this massive amount of blood pouring out of my hand and started screaming and crying.  At first, my friends had no idea what was wrong.  One second I’m laughing, climbing the walls like Spiderman reincarnate; the next I’m huddled on the floor in a growing puddle of blood, crying hysterically.  Madison and Claire, both in various states of undress, ran out to get a teacher.  Meanwhile, I’m on the floor freaking out; thinking I was going to get in so much trouble for climbing (or attempting to climb) over the stall wall.  When Madison and Claire came back, they had Mrs. Taraboletti, better known as the supremely awesome Mrs. T, in tow.  Mrs. T took one look at me and told Madison, who was closer to being completely dressed than Claire, to quickly finish getting changed and to go get the first aid kit.  While Mrs. T waited for Madison to return with the first aid kit, she got me to pick myself up off the bathroom floor and on to one of the maroon benches against the wall.  Mrs. T called in the assistant director of the after-care program into the bathroom, and asked her to call my mom.  She had me put on my red and navy blue plaid jumper, and tightly wrapped my middle finger and hand using gauze and band aids.  When my mom came to pick me up, she came into the bathroom to get both me and my change-of-clothes bag.  We got into the car, and before I knew it, we were pulling into the Christiana Hospital ER parking lot. 

My first impression of the ER waiting room was that it looked something like a very small warehouse with rows of filled chairs.  While my mom dealt with all the paperwork, I tried not to look around too much.  My mom had told me that sometimes people came in with injuries that were not only ten times worse than my own, but also ten times scarier looking than my injury.  We were directed to a pair of empty seats almost immediately in front of the door that led to the rest of the hospital, and maybe they were reserved or something, because nobody else was sitting anywhere near us.  If that was the case, it was rather unfortunate because there were a lot of people standing up.  We were only in the waiting room long enough for my mom finish filling out the paperwork.  They quickly moved us into an examination room, where we continued to wait for someone to come see us.  It was while we waited for the doctor to come that I began to freak out over the thought of possibly having to get stitches.  My mom was trying to get me to keep quite because our “room” wasn’t actually a room, it was a small square made up of dividers.  This meant that anyone who cared enough to listen could hear everything that was going on inside our little cubicle.  My mom didn’t want me kicking up a huge fuss over the possibility of receiving stitches, especially seeing as there were people had actually had cause to make scene and weren’t around. 

When the doctor did finally come around; I was properly worked up.  It didn’t help that the doctor had seen something he didn’t recognize in the slit on my palm and decided he would have to dig around with a pair of tweezers to retrieve it.  Personally, I was all for leaving it there, but the doctor told me that it had to come out because it might cause my injury to become infected.  The doctor went and got everything he would need to fix my hand up.  He came back with a pair of tweezers, a bottle of an unidentifiable liquid, and strips of gauze.  He sat down and told me that because of the location of my injury, it would be impractical to use stitches.  As he described how he was going to dress my hand, he took the tweezers, grabbed my hand, and began to pick at the dark piece of fiver caught in the slit on my palm.  When he had gotten it out, he held it up in order to get a closer look.  He told my mom he didn’t necessarily think it was metal from the bathroom stall walls.  My mom said it was probably from a sweater than had gotten caught on the wall before I slit my finger.  He told me that I wouldn’t have to receive a tetanus shot because I was up-to-date on all my shots, and because my injury seemed to be fairly clean cut.  He told me the unidentifiable liquid was called ‘skin glue,’ and that it was used in cases such as mine when the wound need outside help in order to close, but didn’t necessarily  need stitches.  The doctor was finished dressing my hand in less than 20 minutes, and as we were leaving, he told my mom that for the next couple of days I should be careful not to allow my right hand to be exposed to a lot of water. 

When I finally got home, my mom gave me a plastic sandwich bag to stick on my hand during my shower.  I didn’t like having to wear it on my hand, because I’m predominantly right-handed, and it made it difficult to accomplish some of the most basic hygienic tasks.  When I went to school the next day, Madison Kennedy, and Claire Moosberg ran up to me from Van Buren Street.  They bombarded me with questions about my hand and what had happened after I left Extended Day, the after-care program at my school, with my mom.  I told them they would have to wait until morning circle time with Mrs. Celello, our third grade teacher, in order to find out.  When I eventually told my story, Mrs. Celello (whom I disliked) seemed fairly skeptical of my explanation of slipping in the bathroom stall while changing into my play clothes during Extended Day.  Most of my other classmates thought it was pretty cool because in third grade when you have an injury that will leave a scar, you become the most popular kid in the grade.  And, of course, I felt pretty special.  I won’t lie and say I didn’t play it up a bit.  I would complain that writing was too difficult, or I was unable to complete my homework because of my injury.  That excuse lasted about a day or so before Mrs. Celello called me on my bull crap and I had to do my work again. 

My story of how I slit my hand is definitely one of those live-and learn scenarios.  So, heed my advice when I say that climbing bathroom stall walls like Spiderman and going over them like a monkey is dangerous.  Looking back on it now, I can see how stupid we all were.  I mean, why would someone who was in their right mind want to climb over the stall walls in the bathroom?  The obvious answer is that they wouldn’t.  And I probably shouldn’t have, but looking back on it now; I can laugh at both my stupidity and naivety with good humor.