…my dad had been fixing something with super glue. When I walked into the room, he looked grim and my mom looked worried.
“Do you think alcohol?” She asked.
“I don’t think it’ll do a thing,” he answered.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Your dad glued his fingers together,” Mom answered.
Dad held up his hand. His pointer finger was stuck to his thumb in an ‘OK’ gesture.
Mom continued, “We need nail polish remover but I’m all out. There has to be something we can use.”
As she said this, I’d moved closer to Dad and was studying his fingers. My father was a teaser and a prankster. He was always saying silly things or telling little stories to see me puzzle them out. The good thing about this was that I had a loving and involved father. The bad part was, I could never really know if he was messing with me or not.
I sat there staring at his fingers while he and Mom talked about alternatives. Mom finally went and got her purse and started heading for the door.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“To the store to get something,” she said.
“Can I come?”
“Not this time. I’m just there and back.”
“Why?”
“I need the stuff to get your dad’s fingers apart,” she said
I turned back to Dad’s glued fingers, which, by now I’d decided were not glued and he was just messing with me. That or they were glued but I played with glue all the time and it wasn’t that strong. As he called to Mom to ask her to pick up something else, I reached up and grabbed both of his digits. Before he could pull away, I yanked as hard as I could and boy, did those fingers come unstuck!
Dad yelped in pain and stood up, kicking the chair backwards and making all kinds of noise. Mom came running back in, yelling, “What happened?”
I saw the most rare variety of rage welling up inside my father. I had just messed up big-time. He hopped around huffing and puffing and holding his fingers with his other hand. Blood began to drip from between his hands and I knew I was in serious trouble.
“WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?” He screamed. Mom came running back into the room, throwing her purse on the floor and spilling it everywhere. I watched in horror as lipstick rolled in my direction and I knew I was toast.
“GO TO YOUR ROOM!” They screamed in unison. They didn’t have to tell me twice. I ran as fast as I could.
The next few minutes were torture. How much trouble was I in? How badly had I hurt my dad? Oh man, this was at least a spanking. Probably no TV for a while. OH NO! What if they took away some toys???!!!
I sat on my bed for what felt like forever waiting for one of them to come in. I think the stress of the situation was just too much because the next thing I knew, my dad was shaking me awake and it was dark outside.
He sat on the bed next to me and said in a quiet and soothing voice, “I’m sorry I yelled. It just hurt, that’s all. I know you were just trying to help.”
I relaxed a bit when he tousled my hair and patted my shoulder. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know, son. It’s okay,” he said, “Now you know.”
As he hugged me, I looked down at his hand. He had a ball of gause wrapped around the pointer finger of his left hand. His thumb, however, was unbandaged although it looked chunky, bloody and raw.
“Daddy? Why do you only have a band-aid on your finger? Isn’t your thumb hurt too?”
He held out his hand for me to have a closer look. It was then that I saw something that still makes me shudder to this day. “No, son, my thumb is just fine. It just has the pad of my finger glued to it.”
