I think you’ll get the Point…
When I was about fourteen I was at the stage of wanting to get involved in everything my dad did from washing the car to putting a shelf up, to emptying the garage, and putting it all back in again – a concept I never fully understood as a child, but one I grew to understand as I got older. Its difficult throwing stuff in the bin, because you convince yourself that it’ll “come in handy one day”.
One time when helping my dad empty junk from the garage, he decided that so it had to go to the rubbish tip/junk yard, so off we went with a trailer full of bits of wood, scrap metal and other random stuff. We got to the place, and we started chucking all this junk in to the giant skips, much fun was had – its odd how chucking stuff in a big bucket is fun, but I digress.
We were reaching the bottom of the trailer, so – in my fourteen year old wisdom – grabbed the side and jumped into the back of the trailer at full speed, I grabbed a couple of bits of wood and chucked them over, then went for the last bit, I grabbed it and it wouldn’t lift up. ‘That’s weird’ I remember thinking, then I noticed I was standing on it, ‘that explains it’, I said to myself…then as realisation kicked in, my brain started doing overtime, a shooting pain flew up my leg and blew my skull off, as I realised that I’d jumped full for on to a plank of wood with three inches of nail in it. Bugger.
It was probably the worst thing I’d ever felt. The blasted nail had pierced right through my trainers, and in to my heel, where I honestly thought it had embedded itself in my ankle bone. I tried to suck it up, as a weird mix of adrenaline and fear took over. It may sound stupid, but out of a million thoughts I was having, the first one was that I had ruined my trainers.
With the (about 2ft long) plank firmly attached to my foot, my dad had to lift me out of the trailer (thank god the cool girls from school didn’t hang about the rubbish tip – my stupid mind was now thinking), and bundled me into the car. Dad decided that the best thing to do was to just pull it out on the count of three… I remember it well…
Dad: “one, two, the…”
Me: “whoah, whoah, whoah…ok just do it”
Dad: “one,two, the…”
Me: “whoah, whoah, whoah…”
Dad: “one…”
And then he pulled it, apparently I went quite green, but otherwise I was ok. The nail was a beast, and I still have it kicking about as a memento of the worst thing of that year. On the way home, I was bought a plaster and a Caramac (hands up if you remember those) which I later learned was a bargaining chip to “NEVER tell mum that you stood on a nail, because she’ll kill me for letting you jump in the trailer”.
And remarkably, 14 years on, I never have. Unless she reads this. Sorry dad.
