Got no art, but I'm filled with story

So this is, what? Two or three weeks since I last did anything for Illustration Friday? Time flies.

I did think of a story to share.

Growing up when I did, we kids didn't have video games to occupy our time, but that doesn't mean we didn't have fun. I remember when I was in elementary school one kid – let's call him Bobby – showed several of us other kids something pretty neat. He had one of those needles with a colored ball on the end that are used in sewing. This was probably fourth grade to give you an age idea. And no, the needle wasn't the neat part. The neat part was after he turned his back with the needle, did something, turned back around, held up his hand fingernail side toward us and fingers apart. There was the needle sticking across his index finger about halfway down. He waved his hand around like crazy and the needle didn't fall off. We were awed. No video games, remember? We had to know how he did it.

Since he was a sharing kind of Bobby, he showed us. It turned out he took the needle and carefully stuck it through the skin on his finger, going across the padded area on the palm side so that it just went under one or two layers of skin but didn't go far enough to cause bleeding. Ooooo! How cool is that? Hey! My mom sews! She has DOZENS of those needles! Thus began the plan. The plan to be the cool kid on Monday.

I went home, found my mom's needle stash – a.k.a. "pincushion" – and practiced. The nice thing about this is your body will tell you when you're doing it wrong. Too deep and it hurts, to shallow and the skin tears. I learned quickly and on Monday I snuck my mom's pincushion with me to school. At recess I started putting pins through my fingers.

When I was done, I went to the other kids and presented my hand the same way Bobby had. I had six needles going through each finger, two per pad. Ooooooo! Then I turned my hand around and showed them that I also had crossed six more needles on the fleshy part of my palm at the base of my fingers. Ahhhhhhh! King for a day.

I also found, later on, that if you insert a needle into that fleshy part of your palm and don't push it all the way though, but instead wiggle it around back and forth a bit, you could make a pocket in your hand large enough to hold a dime. That was walking around money in those days, and nothing impresses a cashier like pulling a dime from your hand pocket.

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Two movies that I've seen lately that I highly recommend: "Knocked Up" and "1408". However I will say that you'll get much more scare out of "1408" if you haven't seen the previews.

Comments

Derek Knight said…
I've done that too except, due to a shop mishap in 7th grade which severed some nerves, I used to be able to stick a needle into the tip of my thumb pretty much to the bone.

Did you know that nerve regeneration isn't really all that gradual, nor does it give you any real warning signs? yeah, I don't to that trick anymore.
Heather said…
Okay, that gave me the willies! Made my legs go goopy! YUCK!
Anonymous said…
Nice! Every one could use a hand pocket. Hey maybe Derek could incorporate it into his card trick and pull your card from his hand pocket.
Conqueress said…
I'm not that much younger... but all I ever did was eat glue in school.
Anonymous said…
URGH!!! That's gloriously revolting!! Kids are great, when I was at scholl in The Motherland, the kids would carve the Take That symbol in to their arms with a compass and fill it with Indian Ink so they had nasty prison tatoos.

I never got in to that but then I also know where my compass had been- half an inch deep in the wood of my desk carving out obscenities!!

Oh... those salad days...

I would have loved to see the dime pocket. HOW cool!!!

~Nate

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