My 13-year-old son stuck his hand in a blender.
Yes, a blender.
Another 13-year-old boy, who shall remain nameless, turned the blender on.
Before the Great Blender Accident, the boy was considered a "best friend" and "all-around skating dude." He has since been declared persona non grata around these parts, mostly because he insists that he turned the blender on by accidentally bumping it.
Mm-hmm. That's an accident like Pearl Harbor was an accident.
You can't just bump a blender and have it go off on its crush ice-and-fingers setting. It doesn't happen. Those buttons take force to make them move.
I was standing at the kitchen sink while the boys were attempting to make ice slushies. My son says, "Hold on, I need to get something."
Had I known that something was not something across the room, but in the bottom of the blender, I would have intervened. You see, I know to keep your freakin' hands away unless you want to lose a digit. This is called common sense.
This is apparently something a 13-year-old boy does not have a setting for and whose software he does not recognize any commands from.
I heard the blender turn on, and then a little girl screamed. At least that is what I thought at the time. It turns out that a 13-year-old boy who has just had his fingers pureed in a blender sounds exactly like a little girl shrieking. Who knew?
I immediately grabbed his hand and shoved it under the cold-water faucet in the kitchen sink. I'm trying to wash blood away and see if he still has all his fingers or if I need to go on a hunt for body parts. Thankfully, I could tell that he was intact, albeit a tad shredded.
He was writhing around, still screaming, as I'm deciding that, yep, an ER visit is in order.
Later in the week, the friend calls, and this is the conversation I heard from my son's end. I've taken the liberty of translating it from Skater-speak to something that you might be able to understand.
"Dude, how come you turned it on, man?"
"Dude, did you see the blood? Was the ice all bloody?"
"Dude, I seriously wanted to pick up the blender and smash it in your face when you did that."
Now I'm thinking, yeah, when would that have been? While you were screaming and writhing in my arms as I tried to see if you still had all your digits?
Duuuuuuude.
This is the boy who, when told not to cut up grapefruit while I was running an errand, did just that. ER visit No. 4,571.
I was hoping that by the time he'd reached the ripe, scarred, old age of 13, that common-sense thing might have a chance. Now I'm pretty sure it's not going to kick in anytime soon.
Although I do see a new career opening up for him. I can see the movie marquee now: "Dude, Where's My Fingers?"
Freelance columnist Pamela Troeppl Kinnaird can be reached at Pamela Troeppl@comcast.net.
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