Don't Touch!

     Yesterday I got the shock of my life second-worst shock I've ever received. Our refrigerator is literally electrified at the moment. If you touch anything other than the plastic handle, you can very distinctly feel an electric current run through your fingers and into your hand....and then at that point I can't take it anymore so I jerk away, or else who knows how far it would go?? Evil, evil fridge! I used to hate it for the extra 5-10 pounds I always seemed to want to lose, but now it's trying to electrocute me...

                                        Don't let its benign appearance fool you!

     It got me thinking about baby-proofing. Obviously electrical outlets are something you want to block

access to. I couldn't imagine if Junior were already with us, however, and he toddled over to the fridge and put his hands on it...and ZAP! I'm prepared to do battle with the obvious...

...but what about the unexpected?? When I was four, my parents and grandmother and I were shopping for men's suits at a haberdashery in downtown Bristol, TN. I was a tactile kid (and still am!) Meaning, anything that looked to have an interesting texture, I had to touch it. And while at the store, I broke away from the fam for a second to check out one of these babies...

...because, you know, it looked interesting. And boy was it ever. I vaguely remember what happened next. My mother called me, I turned to go to her...and couldn't. My grimy little fingers were glued to that radiator. I remember pulling a little and thinking "That's weird" when my hands didn't come away. Then I remember my mother coming over to physically pry my hands off the radiator, thinking, I am sure, that I was just disobeying her, and as soon as she put her hands on my arms...the jolt of electricity that had glued me to the radiator began coursing through her. 

     I remember her screaming for help, I remember a man in a red polo shirt racing over to the electrical outlet to my right, and I remember him jerking plugs out of the outlet as fast as he could. 

     Then my memory skips to the ride home. In between the unplugging and the ride home I had collapsed, the ambulance had arrived, I'd made a trip to the hospital...but none of that registered. Come to find out, there was a short in the wire of something the store had plugged into the outlet next to the radiator. And the shorted-out wire was up against the radiator.

     I think about this episode in my young life and it scares me a little. I have always been very, very nervous around electrical devices or issues, and I'm now concerned that while I will have every electrical outlet in the city blocked off from my son, I'll miss something else--a baby gate that isn't latched properly, or access to a household cleaner that I neglected to nip in the bud. I know mothers try to watch their children like hawks, but--all it takes is a second for little ones--maybe even particularly boys--to get into mischief. 

     While I go about my day today, wait for the repairman to fix the fridge and eat my lunch out so I don't have to touch the evil thing, tell me:

Anything from your childhood that still freaks you out as an adult?