My mom would take me, my brother and sister to the mall, and we would run around like the little terrors we were. My mom would attempt to take us winter shopping, and we'd be playing hide-and-seek among the clothing racks. She'd want me to try on a pair of jeans, and I'd be laying amongst dirt and dead skin on the floor underneath a shirt rack.
We would inevitably scream that we were hungry, and my saint of a mother would take us to the food court to feed us. When I was six years old, we were standing in line to order when I saw something incredibly round, shiny, and silver. I touched it. My hand lay on the silver circle for ten seconds before I felt a burning sensation. My reflexes weren't fantastic, and it took another minute before I realized that I had burnt the shit out of my hand.
The reasonable thing would have been to cry at my mom and expect her to fix my hurts. She continues to be one of the most loving, caring, understanding women in the world. Instead, I didn't tell her that my hand felt like it had been crippled in a fire. I had recently learned the child definition of retarded and thought she would be mad at me for being so retardedly stupid. Instead, I tried not to cry. Because that's logical. When she asked what I wanted to eat for lunch, I screamed, "Water!"
"Okay, okay," my mom replied.
When two seconds passed and I wasn't immediately given a glass of water, I screamed at her that I wanted water NOW.
"Calm down hunny," she said.
A full two minutes passed by before she bestowed me with a glass of water. I didn't even thank her, I just plunged my hand directly into it.
"What are you doing?" she asked, eyeing my hand inside a plastic foam cup.
"Just trying to get out an ice cube," I responded.
When we sat down, my mom's focus was on my little sister throwing food and my brother poking her. I cradled an ice cube in my hand like it was a diamond. I liked diamonds a lot - they were shiny too.
After lunch, we were in store #3 looking at cowboy boots when my mom noticed that I was shaking my right hand back and forth violently. I had thought that shaking my hand would get some air into it and make the burning stop. Because that makes sense.
We later discovered that the fast food place had been technologically advanced in the early nineties and had circular coffee warmers placed into their countertop. I had third degree burns because of a shiny coffee pot warmer.
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