Preface: At the time, my older boy, child #4, was about 4.5 years old. He had already had 3 sets of stitches: one on the top of his head courtesy of his sister whacking him with a hand shovel in retaliation for him chasing her with a stick, one exactly a week later courtesy of another sister throwing a matchbox car at him during cleanup time and splitting his top lip entirely requiring a pediatric facial plastic surgeon, and the last set just above the eyebrow when he jumped out of his granddaddy's parked car and landed head first on the gravel section of the driveway. After the ER doctor recognized me on the second trip I asked him at what point they call DCS. Thankfully, he said they could tell the difference between abuse and a 'repeat offender'. The following story occurred about 6 months after the last trip to the ER....
We had a close call on round four of stitches today. And yeah, it was Child #4 again. What is the fascination with knives? Let us explore....
It all started when Child #4 came running from the kitchen holding an unsharpened pencil. I thought he was going to ask me to sharpen it, until he started screaming about blood. I took the pencil from his bloody hand, and as I ushered him back into the kitchen for a wet cloth I asked him what he had cut himself on. His answer, as he pointed to the counter, "that knife".
To summarize the next 5 minutes, I learned that he really thought he could sharpen the pencil himself with that hunting knife. I didn't even think to ask why he thought that, I just figured it was a little boy thing and I moved along to controlling the blood flow. We've had enough incidents I no longer panic at the sight of blood, its just another day.
After 15 minutes of sitting in my lap while I applied pressure to his injured fingers, my husband happened to call. He told me what he was doing, I told him about the bloody hand/knife incident. He immediately went quiet, then said, "well he couldn't have gotten the blade closed". At that point I knew he had more information. I had only identified it as a knife. He knew it was his hunting knife. How did he know? Because, "he saw me sharpen a pencil with it last night and I told him not to touch it."
Yeah, he told him not to touch it. Which in little-boy-speak means "touch it, touch it, touch it!!!" Of course, as soon as Child #4 realized I had just told Daddy what happened, he said, "oh, he's gonna be mad". He knew. He just really didn't care. And you'd think this whole incident would have turned him off from the knife. No. He actually laughed when the blood stopped and said, "see, I'm fine now". Which in little-boy-speak means, "I will do that again as soon as you aren't looking, so you'd better hide the knife now".
Consider the knife hidden.
