Saturday, January 9, 2010

The Perfect Storm

There’s this cool trick you can do with a little box – about 3” x 5” or so. You cut a circle in the bottom, close to one end, and just the right size to put your finger through. Then you line the box with gauze and get some fake blood. Stick your finger through the bottom and squirt the fake blood on it. Then put the lid on the box. The result is what appears to be a bloody severed finger. Show it to your friends and watch them go from intrigued to terrified when you wiggle your finger!

Why is this entry called “The Perfect Storm”? The concept is that one storm is bad, two storms – well, that’s really bad, but add a third storm to the mix and you have the recipe for a disaster of biblical proportions.


She took one look at that nail-less, wrinkled up, bloody finger lying in that box and went into hysterics...


Now, consider these three elements:
Storm #1 - A harried mom trying to get three kids ready for church on Easter morning
Storm #2 - A kid who recently smashed his middle finger in the doorway and lost a fingernail
Storm #3 - A 3x5 box with a hole cut in the bottom.

One of the reasons we were running late on Easter morning is because I fell back to sleep in the bathtub. I woke up with my fingers and toes all wrinkly. That wrinkly thing really enhanced the effect of the severed finger in a box trick so I decided to share it with mom. In my defense, all I said was, “Look mom, my finger fell off in the bathtub.”

I never got to do the “wiggle my finger” thing. She took one look at that nail-less, wrinkled up, bloody finger lying in that box and went into hysterics. She threw her hands up to her head and started screaming, “Oh my God, Oh my God…!” Visions of mom in an insane asylum flashed through my head. Of course, a case could be made that she already lived in an insane asylum!

We finally got mom settled down, and made it to church, but thank goodness it was Sunday because I had some major repenting to do. Seriously though, after what I did to mom I sat in church that morning with such a pain in the pit of my stomach that I had to get up and leave the sanctuary. After a good cry I got to feeling better.

I don’t know how long it took mom to get over it. But I’m pretty sure that same week she went out and bought her first bottle of hair dye. I choose to believe that was just a coincidence.

Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No comments:

Post a Comment