Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Kitti

This is topic Kitti in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Unwritten (Member # 7960) on :

I don't want to sabotage the other thread, but I was curious.

So, you put your hand and arm through glass. When did you get cut up? Was it all when you pulled your arm out? or did you get cut on impact?

Posted by Kitti (Member # 7277) on :

I have a thread named after me! I feel famous :-)

So, slightly longer version of the tale then. For those who missed the first version - in the dislocated shoulder thread where we were discussing injuries that would hurt but not send characters to the hospital - our fearless heroine (um, me) has shattered a glass door with her bare hand....

The door was swinging shut and I put up my hand to stop it. The glass shattered on impact and the door shut the rest of the way, effectively sending my hand and arm through the glass up to my elbow.

There was surprisingly little damage from the initial moment of impact - the only scar I had on my palm vanished after a decade or so. The worst cuts came from sharp edges of the broken glass as the door swung shut. The places where I was "just" scratched left very thin scars, ranging from two inches long to the length of my forearm. Then there are a couple scars about an inch or so long, much thicker, where chunks of glass were driven into (and broke off into) the skin around my wrist and up my arm (I think I must have had my arm at a slight angle when the door shattered).

I don't remember making anything worse when I pulled my hand out of the door, but I was a bit hysterical at the time :-) Some of the scars are hook-shaped at the end, so I probably did some damage.

I know my parents were careful in removing the pieces of glass; there were a bunch of tiny ones that they pulled out with tweezers, and the bigger ones I think they just used their hands to get out.

For those of you who are now screaming, "Take that child to the hospital!" we were about 1.5-2 hours from the nearest hospital. So my parents just bandaged up my arm and gave me a popsicle; then we went back to hanging out with our respective friends.

Of course, I wasn't allowed back into the pool... :-P

Posted by Unwritten (Member # 7960) on :

Thanks for sharing.

I guess parents do what they've got to do, but I would have taken you to the hospital anyway, just because I would have passed out trying to get slivers of glass out of a hysterical child.

Posted by Kitti (Member # 7277) on :

Never underestimate the power of a popsicle to calm down a screaming child...

Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :

I once went through a plate glass window. It was the winter door of my parents' house up north. I walked (quickly) up to it, hit the window with the palm of my hands to open it like i'd done a thousand times before, and went right through it, down the porch to the sidewalk, the glass falling with me.

I've got a little scar on the inside of one elbow that I know is from that...plus a long and barely-visible-these-days scar on one leg that I think is from it...and nothing else. No hospital, no nothing.

I was lucky. I don't think I'm indestructible.