Solar Pain or "It's always fun until someone gets burned"

Today was a joyous day. The weather was perfect, low humidity and a constant breeze. This morning while everyone had gone to town for the weekly supply run I cleaned the house and washed the dishes. When everything was completed inside I went out and got the lawnmower ready for a few hours of mindless destruction. I cut the grass up the driveway and then up by the road. When I got back down here I cut the grass all around the house, then promptly gassed it up again and got it ready for our fifteen year old to finish up the job.. Delegation of duties is a parent's gold mine... After coming inside and opening all the doors and windows to allow the breeze to run through the house, I enjoyed a pleasant shower and then settled in to carve a pencil I had been instructed to do for a friend's birthday gift, as a joke. Grateful Dead and Tom Waits blared throughout the house as I worked on the carving, then completed a cane I had been working on.

When the family returned with the week's provisions we unloaded the car and my niece called to see if our five year old wanted to come over to play with her daughter. So with the day's remaining chores delegated to the fifteen year old and the five year old away playing, my wife and I placed some solar lights around the property while riding on the kawasaki mule for a while, then came back in to enjoy a good nap with all the cool breezes and freshly mowed grass smell permeating the area.

With the onset of evening, I decided it was time to have the first fire of the season. The air outside was cool enough to enjoy a nice fire and the pile was getting high, so the time was right. I spent some time sorting through the pile of limbs and debris that we keep to use as fuel, building a nice sized fire, but keeping it reasonable. James, the five year old, had returned from playing and was excited to help me tend the fire. We played and talked as night began to set in. He actually tried to roast some vienna sausages on a stick, but as you could imagine, the dogs ate well... James was going through the yard looking for anything that could be used as additional fuel for the fire and happened across an old rusted can. He ran up to the fire and tossed it in, as I told him not to throw anything metal in there. A few minutes later he used his "poking stick" and raked a pile of coals out of the fire as I was stoking it up. I told him about the dangers of spreading the coals around, and noticed out of the corner of my eye that he was bending over. I looked at him as picked up the can he had thrown in the fire... He dropped it quickly and said, "Ow that's hot!" I said, "yeah you shouldn't do that.."

He came over and I looked at his hand, he had burned his thumb and index finger. The burn wasn't bad, just slightly red and no blisters. He played for a minute or two then went inside. After a few minutes my wife came out on the porch and wanted to know what had happened. I went inside and James was in a panic, his fingers were "ripping apart"...

What followed was a about an hour of him screaming at us and running away from us, then demanding that we provide him with more cool water for his cup that he was holding his hand in. He wouldn't let us look at it, but we saw enough to know that while painful, it wasn't bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital, a small bit of blistering on his thumb was about all we could see. Being a veteran of many burns, cuts and self inflicted injuries from my hobbies, I informed him that it was going to hurt for a bit, but would eventually stop. We called my niece, who had some solarcaine on hand and she came over to bring it, James hid in the bathroom from her...

He kept wanting us to spray it on so "It will stop hurting right now!" The panic in his eyes over the pain was stressful, but we knew what had to happen and waited it out. I promised him a ride on the kawasaki mule to check out the lights we put around and he yelled, "I don't want to go anywhere, I want mom to keep putting the solar pain on me until I feel better so I can use my hand!!"

Once we gave him a couple of hours to calm down, and a good dose of tylenol, he began to get over the pain. I checked his fingers out and he was fine. When his emotional state began to return to normal we were a bit drained... yet James remembered the promises of a "mule ride" So I loaded him up on the kawasaki and we set of at walking speed with the head lights off.... and had to visit each light we had placed... twice...

The late night ride gave us time to talk about what all had happened during the past few hours and I asked him, "What did you learn from all this?" He looked up at me and said, "Never to touch anything hot, and I don't want to be outside for anymore fires..." Yet by the time we got back home, noticing the fire had burned down to embers, he wanted to check it out and wound up tossing a few more sticks on it and running around dancing before he realized he hated fires now. So we sat there and stared up at the crescent moon, and I listened as James saw a star and made a wish... He was whispering so I listened carefully.. "And please make the pain stop I can play without crying.." Even with all the drama, it was still a good day...