"Not till your old enough..."

One Christmas not too long ago.. I decided my son was old enough to get his very own dagger… he had a friend at the time who collected them so I thought.. well… a boy should have a knife..  Mr. Safety would be careful right??  It wasn’t a month after Christmas that it was taken away to never return…  somehow he was laying in bed with the dagger dangling over his face and he lost his grip…all that happened was a  small cut centimeters from his eye.. but what if it stabbed him in the eye? What if what if what if… I am pretty sure that was what my parents thought.. I was not even allowed to use a butter knife… I must have been at least 5 or 6 and I remember grabbing Papa’s butter knife to butter my toast.. “BE CAREFULL!” oh pfffffttt I thought.. it isn’t sharp! I think it was while I was hiding from doing the chores I grabbed one wondering what the big deal is. They couldn’t cut my skin? Could they? I am pretty sure my Mama would have had a fit if she walked in the kitchen at that time to see me sawing on my arm with a butter knife to see if it would cut me or not…

It did..

I had to hide it.. wasn’t a gaping wound but it did smart pretty bad..

Shoot… they were right.

But somehow when I was finally old enough in their eyes to use knifes I was as dumb as a box of rocks with them. I can count on my left hand at least five scars that I got from using them. Did it help me to wait till I was older? Not sure. Did I think they were over reacting and stupid? Of course.

Yet I was allowed to do other things that I should have been watched more closely.

Did they realized the dangers of burning trash? No... Did I burn myself countless times playing with melting milk jugs? Yes.. Did I try and see how long I could hold onto burning bags? Umm … Was I an idiot?

Don’t answer that!

Having kids of my own now really makes me rethink how my parents did.. all the things we were never allowed to do as a kid. I find myself doing the same thing. As we send our kids off into the world (back yard) we question ourselves.. “ have we convinced them of the dangers out there? Are they going to listen? Did we teach them well enough to use that knife/hatchet/saw/machete? Well them come back inside with all their limbs?”

Usually we get our answer before they are completely out of the yard.. the arm holding the said weapon goes swinging with the said weapon coming to inches to the sibling closest to them..  either that said sibling will ignore it or come inside complaining of almost losing a eye/ear/toe/nose/upper body.

Do we let them figure it out for them selves? I think so…

They should also have a discount at the hospitals for ppl like us..