Lawnmower Boy

A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE MOWING KIND Written 1/24/05

During the Spring of 2002 a curious nine year-old (better known as Andrew, or Monkey-boy to his father), lacking in wise judgement, shoved his hand inside a running lawn mower and miraculously suffered only minor injuries.

Determined to see what would happen if a stick was placed up inside the fascinating, rotating machine, he managed to get too close to the mower while his father was giving the lawn a much needed trim. Ray realized he was there, quickly released the safety switch, and lunged to grab his son, but Andrew was just too fast for him. Andrew, realizing that his ingenious experiment was about to be terminated, ducked under his dad and quickly shoved his hand inside while the blades were still turning. Ray heard three loud “ka-chunks” and felt sick to his stomach. Andrew removed his hand and just stared at the machine.

Ray expected Andrew’s hand to resemble cole slaw and was pleasantly surprised to find he still had all his fingers, but his skin and nails were pretty shredded. Ray immediately removed his shirt and used it to bandage Andrew’s hand, who by this time had realized that he was bleeding and started to cry.

It’s amazing how fast the doctor will see you when you walk into an Instacare and say the words “child, lawn mower, and accident” in the same sentence! Although they tried to convince us to go straight to Primary Children’s Hospital, we told them we didn’t think it was as bad as it sounded and would they just take a look. X-rays revealed that no bones were broken, and even his shredded skin wounds were not deep enough to warrant stitches. They were amazed! We were thankful! They cleaned the wounds, bandaged his hand, and prescribed antibiotics in case of infection (which would be likely, since we had a golden retriever that contributed amazing amounts of “digested by-products” to keep our lawn mower blades lubricated at all times). The hard part was the bandaging – we warned the doctor that our son was a regular Houdini when it came to removing bandages, so they sent in their best bandage expert, who was very careful and thorough at gift-wrapping a very uncooperative patient.

By the time we got into the car and drove a block and a half, the gauze bandage was off. We decided to stop by Dick’s Market for a few first aid supplies.

Ray replaced the bandage with Neosporin and lots more gauze. He then wrapped Andrew’s arm up to the elbow with an ace bandage, which he covered with duct tape so the ace bandage would not shift. He then pulled a large, clean sock over the whole thing and duct taped that onto the ace bandage. That bandage stayed.

Upon recovering from the shock of this whole unfortunate incident, I actually found myself thinking, “Maybe he’ll stay out of trouble for awhile now since he only has the use of one hand . . .” Yeah, right.

The next day in church, he used the large “bat” on his arm to break the glass (for the second time) over the fire extinguisher in the hall, which he found so amusing he forgot all about his injury. (As did his mother – all sympathy went right out the window.)

The Monday following the accident, we were in a hurry and Rachel was helping me by dropping Andrew off at school. A cluster of teachers and students surrounded them, asking about his arm. Rachel, the master of understatement, replied with only two words, the two words that strike fear in the heart of every mother: “lawn mower”. She exited while they were still gasping.

Almost three years later, you can barely see a scar on Andrew’s right hand, but he has great respect for the lawn mower. He always sits at a respectable distance when the grass is being cut, and he often points to the mower, then wraps an imaginary bandage around his arm – his way of telling us that he has learned a lesson that he will never, never forget.