Tuesday, October 10, 2006

I remember playing in the car....

Before you start clucking your tongue, this was something I was allowed to do. I wasn't a little kid, for goodness' sake. I was 11 or 12!

It was a sunny day and I was playing by myself. I was sitting in the driver's seat of the '68 Comet, pretending to be a grown-up, all cool and suave. I rested my right wrist on the steering wheel lazily, then rolled down the window and nodded nonchalantly at the people I was pretending to drive by. Oh, they were impressed with my driving skills! I glanced at the radio and pushed a few buttons, looking for imaginary rock and roll music.

At this point, I remember my eye landing on the cigarette lighter. All of a sudden I could look at nothing else. There it sat, woefully unused except for the few times Dad had showed me how it would pop out when it was hot. I found myself wondering how it worked. I pushed it in. I waited. It popped, and I pulled it out and looked at the glowing red circles. How could this light a cigarette? There wasn't even any flame. I did the next thing that popped into my mind. I touched it.

Wow! I burned myself a new set of fingerprints, and fast! First I dropped the lighter. Then I looked around quickly to see if anyone had noticed my stupidity. Nope, still alone. Then I stuck the lighter back in its place and sucked my finger.

This is how I have learned many of the important lessons in my life. There seems to be an inability to accept anybody else's word for anything. It means I have hurt myself many times, burned myself many new sets of fingerprints...but I know what I know, and nobody can tell me any different.

7 comments:

Christopher Newton said...

Hey Paula - I really like your new indexing system. How you do that? I need something like that for The Pondering Pig.
Fortunately for me, I always listened to what my Mama told me. That's why I'm still at home today.
You, being so young and foolish, poor girl,
let a gambler lead you astray.

Paula said...

Hey, Mr. Pig!

I switched to beta.blogger. It has a whole bunch of spiffy new features, and I really like it. Make the switch!

The only problem I can see so far is that I can't comment on blogs that haven't switched yet...but they are working on fixing that.

Anonymous said...

It sounds like you are what makes John Lockes theories go round...."Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word; experience" I'm with you, though, I really couldn't understand how something that has no flame could light something on fire...I also have since learned.

Spoke said...

You're kinda like a monkey in that way...

Spoke said...

I've nominated this blog for Canada's best personal blog.

http://cba.myblahg.com/

Becca said...

You know. People lie to you. Once, I was taking swimming lessons and my instructor told me to jump in the water--in the shallow end. I was like "No way man. I'll break my feet," and put up a fight for a good ten minuets. He said I would be fine. Finally giving in, I jumped in the pool and broke most of my left foot. Yeah, he felt like a dirt bag.

toomanywhatifs said...

Ahhh...the index finger burn... been there...