This... (a wire christmas ornament hanger)
Plus this... (your standard wall plug)
Equals this... (Stratt's burnt fingers)
Yesterday afternoon Stratton was playing with the dump trucks in the living room upstairs, or so I thought, while I read the newspaper in the kitchen. All of a sudden he came screaming in the kitchen holding his hand with the other. I sat him on the counter and asked him what had happened. He said that he hurt his hand but he would not show it to me. I could smell that something was burnt so I looked at the hand he was holding and could see that his thumb and pointer fingers where brown, like they had been burnt. I asked him what he burnt himself on and he wouldn't tell me. So, I set him on the ground, after I gave him a cold paper towel to hold, so that he could show me what he burnt it on. At first he tried to tell me that he burnt it on the cold air return. I knew that wasn't the case since it is never hot. Finally he showed me that he had taken the hanger and straightened it out and put one side of it into the top plug and the other into the the bottom. Needless to say it shocked and burnt him. He was crying really hard because it was hurting so bad. I asked him if was ever going to do that again. Of course he said no. I really wasn't in panic mode until I called the ER and the nurse told me that electricity can travel internally and burn his internal organs and mess up his heart. She asked how bad the burn was, which isn't all that bad. She said that more than likely he is OK but to watch him close. After talking to her I was stressed so I called my friend Suzanne, who's a nurse, and asked her how bad the burn had to be before I panicked. She also reassured that he was probably just fine. The worst part about the situation was that on Monday he put a crayon in a GFI plug downstairs and tripped that set outlets. So we had already had the electricity talk.
Moral of the story...
Wire ornament hangers... household outlets... burnt fingers... "PRICELESS" life lessons!
