Puncture wound. Puncture wound. Puncture wound. Just the words themselves are unpleasant and make me all squirmy. I had a health teacher in high school, Pred Poffman, who spent what seemed like an entire week talking about puncture wounds in uneccesary detail. One of my classmates fainted during class from revulsion. I'm not kidding. All I remember from those lectures were his tone when he said "puncture wound" and my poor classmate fainting.

So Charlie got himself a puncture wound this week. Stepped on a nail. Childhood right of passage. He had to go to the hospital and everything. He is a worrier and to puncture a worrier is to unleash a whole host of new worries. It didn't help that literally the night before the nail stepping we were reading "The Great Brain" and a boy in the book stepped on a nail, didn't tell his parents, got an infection and had to have his leg amputated. Poor Charlie said all he could think of as he lay in the hospital waiting for his wound to be examined was that story and that the doctor might come and chop off his leg. He is fine now but is limping around quite dramatically which is fun for everyone.

So though I may not remember a lot about puncture wounds, I do remember that they are bad and certainly not something to be envied. Try telling that to Buddy and Petunia. "Look Stepmommy, I stepped on a nail too!," cried Petunia. "I put hydrogen peroxide on the cut and it bubbled and everything and oh God it really hurts!" "Me too!! Petunia didn't really but I really did," said Buddy. "My skin got all pressed up into my foot."

Petunia had a small cut on her foot, but it was really small and nicely scabbed over and didn't look to have been caused by a nail. Buddy, flawless foot. "Hmmm," I said. "Please be careful and stay away from that place in the future, it sounds really dangerous!"

I think they actually did go and try to step on sharp things after Charlie got injured. Thank God he wasn't covered in poison ivy or hadn't fallen off the porch and accidentally cracked his skull–who knows what they would have done.