A Jen Too Many

When I was a kid, getting a splinter was a traumatic affair, fraught with terror, filled with agony, heralded with much screaming and throwing myself around in hysteria. And it was all my father's fault.

I would go to unreasonable lengths to keep my parents from discovering I had a splinter. It didn't matter how big the splinter, or how much it hurt, anything was better than having them find out, because they would insist it came out. Immediately. I think there was talk about infection. I don't know for sure; that part of the whole thing is vague. What's clearest in my memories is The Pin.

My dad, as soon as he found out we had a splinter, would get out the matches, and get a pin from my mother's sewing supplies. He would light the match, then hold the pin in the flame for as long as he could, usually until the metal discolored. This was to sterilize it, he told us.

When the pin was properly sterilized, he would grab the part of our bodies (usually a hand) where the splinter was, and start digging. He had a grip of steel. It didn't matter how much you screamed, cried, and fought to get away, nothing was going to free you until Daddy let you go, and he wasn't doing that until the splinter was gone. He'd poke the pin into your skin where the splinter had entered, trying to catch the wood with the point of the pin, so that he could push / pull it out. If that didn't work he'd go to the other end of the splinter and try to push it out from there. If that still didn't work, he'd use the pin to start breaking through your skin over the splinter until enough splinter surface was exposed to let the pin get a good hold of it and pull it out.

I would have cheerfully allowed gangrene to set in and take a limb rather than have my oh so earnestly concerned father deal with even the simplest splinter.

When I had children, one of the first things I did was buy tweezers. I couldn't imagine why my parents had never thought to use tweezers to deal with splinters. It was so brilliant! So simple! So painfree!! My children, I thought smugly, would have all their splinters dealt with simply, quickly and pain-free. No pins for my family, no sirree.

Yeah. Right.

Just today I went through a familiar routine with Oldest Girl Child. (You could substitute Youngest Girl Child at any point in this and it would be just as valid.) She came in the house, sobbing, clutching her left hand at the wrist as she cradled it to her chest.

"Mommy!! I have a splinter! It hurts!!"

I got the tweezers.

"NOOOOOO!!!!!! NOT THE TWEEZERS!!!!"

I think her scream knocked a few squirrels out of the trees.

After a few tries, I coaxed her into letting me look at her hand. There was a very small splinter, almost too small to see, at the outer base of her thumb. I plucked at it with the tweezers, but couldn't grab anything with which to pull it out. I tried a couple of times before she grabbed her hand back.

"It hurts! Don't touch it! Get it out!"

We wound up soaking her hand for a while (30 seconds) in warm water with dissolved Epsom Salts. I don't know why Epsom Salts, except that it's what my parents used to do when they had a splinter they couldn't get out. I don't think it actually does anything, except make me feel better. I'm doing something! Not just standing there while my child sobs!

After about 30 seconds, OGC decided that it hurt to soak her hand in the water, so we gave up on that. After further negotiations it was decided that that magical cure-all, the cartoon character bandage, was the perfect solution to make it all better.

And off she went, happy again, ready to play.

It is so hard at these times not to say, "You know, when I was little ..."