The Tortures of Christmas
Our parents (or was it, Santa?) played a role in all this mayhem by buying us diabolical crafts, games or other presents with the potential to burn, poke, cut, shoot, bite or blow us up in some capacity. Of course, that’s what made them fun and why we loved our parents.
There’s a direct correlation between self-inflicted pain, pain administered by a sibling and education. Pain reinforces the lesson like no other. Having hot plastic stuck to your skin teaches you to be careful. This happened daily while making Creepy Crawlers and watching the hot gel transform into a jiggly solid. It was a great precursor for casting bullets.
Now, if your sibling intentionally flings the napalm-like hot melted plastic your way, you’ve also learned something. Revenge is just around the corner. This teaches one stealth and tactical planning for carrying out covert missions.
Wood burning kits were another favorite burning device that taught you how to handle hot objects and, more importantly, how not to handle hot objects. The kits came with a plug-in soldiering iron device that accepted different heads with different patterns on them. The kit also supplied several laminated wood pictures that you branded with the appropriate tip.
The problem was, as the metal heats up, it expands, making the once tight tip fall off in your lap … or on your mom’s good sofa. In which case, the red-hot tip disappeared, burning its way through the sofa cushion like a nuclear meltdown. The only way of stopping the burning bit was reaching into the hole and grabbing it with your fingers. I remember falling asleep late one Christmas morning, holding an ice cube in my scorched fingers, hiding the freshly burned hole with my leg.
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