My whole life is a Holiday Horror Story!

Good morning friends!

Many of you know my favorite radio program has been, for the last twenty five years the Bob & Brian Show on 1029 The Hog here in Milwaukee.  My favorite thing they do on the show is read listener letters for various themes, the crowning theme being "Holiday Horror Stories."  

I've submitted stories to them over the years, and yesterday, as they read my entry, I realized I have several instances of holiday horror that I should share with you.  I mean, the holidays are stressful. What's a better cure for stress than laughing at someone else's holiday awfulness?

To that end, I'm giving you, today, my most recent "Holiday Horror Story" and I hope to share more as the week moves closer to Christmas Day. That said, this is a stressful time of year, so if I don't get to it...well...it just didn't happen!

But, as with everything else I write here, this is a true story.

Enjoy!

‘Twas the week before Christmas 1973 and I was six. I wanted to help clean the house.  My father thought it would be fun to put me on the 2x3 square of counter top between the refrigerator and the stove in our galley kitchen and let me dust the top of the fridge.  I loved doing this so much that the next day, Sunday, after church, I wanted to do it again. My mother told me no, since she’d started Sunday dinner.  My mother, however, was never what you’d call an attentive cook, and once she had the pressure cooker and pot of boiling potatoes going on the stove, she went to the living room to play piano.  I used this gap in parental guidance to shimmy onto that tiny patch of counter and again.  I finished the act of dusting with great flourish and stepped back to admire my work.  In doing so I kicked the boiling potatoes off stove and planted my heal squarely on the red hot electric burner. In a vivid slow motion memory, even now I see myself falling off the counter onto the floor before the potatoes did. I curled in a ball as hot spuds rained down on me.

My father carried me to the bathroom where I sat on the counter and soaked my foot in the sink. We had to call our pastor’s wife, who was a nurse, to come and try and peel the melted fragments of nylon/cotton ankle sock embedded in my heel.  The burn was so detailed, you could see the word “general” (as in “General Electric) branded on my skin.

My foot swelled tremendously and I had to wear a furry pink bedroom slipper to school and Christmas events for the next week.   44 years later I still have a pronounced scar on my heel.

It should be noted that my parents never did take me to a doctor for this and my mother still to plays piano while food cooks unattended.