“Mom! The curling iron is heating. My daughter warned me, “Don’t burn yourself again.” Naturally, I would avoid that scary creature in the bathroom. I still remember the time I held the heating iron in my hand and not the handle.
You can trust me when I say that I turned it loose quickly. My fingers were numb from the pain. It was difficult to keep my tears from rolling down my eyes. I was mad at myself for being so stupid. I ran through the house, and I reached the back steps to grab a piece from the aloe plant. I applied some of the liquid to my burnt area and gave my finger an additional dab. It was very painful. The pain subsided after a while. Everything except one finger was fine. A thin blister formed under the skin, but it was gone quickly and I didn’t have any more problems.
I remember my mother using butter to treat minor cuts years ago. It seemed to make the pain worse, but it was the preferred method back then. Through the years, another method I used was to immerse the area in cold water for a short time. I found that the liquid from the aloe plants worked so well to ease the pain that I didn’t use cold water that day. To avoid infection, I applied ointment to the burned area that night.
While I was thinking about the butter method to treat burns, I remembered something that I had read years ago. It dispelled everything I had believed for years. Perhaps your mother told you that reading in poor lighting is bad for your eyes. Experts say that reading in poor lighting can lead to muscle tension, eye fatigue, headaches, and even blindness. It turned out that even though she wasn’t fully informed, our moms still looked out for us and offered good advice. We can all do without headaches, eye fatigue, and muscular tension.
Another thing I believed I knew was wrong turned out to be true. It is amazing how many children eat sand in the sandy southern Alabama region despite all our efforts to stop it. It was always dangerous to me. Consider this. Silica is the basic ingredient of sand. Experts say that sand can be eaten in its powdered form as long as it isn’t toxic. However, I wouldn’t recommend my children ingesting sand.
Nowadays, I don’t have to worry about my little ones eating tiny sand crumbs. But, I have to be careful around heating curling irons.
The first The Andalusia star-news article was A lesson from curling iron.
