Pins and Needles

Last night the landlord’s driver came to drop off the tenancy contract papers of our apartment.

The landlord, an old Arab depends on this driver to act as interpreter. A Pakistani by nationality, the driver is a course-looking man who acts more like the landlords personal assistant than his driver. While he was explaining some Arabic stuff written on the paper to my husband, I noticed a safety pin in his mouth. My eyes zoomed in on just the PIN and watched with a sort of morbid fascination the pin moving up & down while he was talking. I wanted to tell him to take it out but he was talking so fast and explaining some stuff to my husband. Just then the kids came out to see who was at the door, I took them back in & by the time I went back to the door he was gone. I fervently hoped he didn’t swallow the pin.

This reminded me of an incident which happened when I was 6yrs old. It was around 8pm. I was sitting with my mom in the bedroom; she was sitting on a chair & and I was sitting on the wooden post at the edge of the bed. I had this safety pin in my mouth which I was opening & closing with my teeth. My fingers were lightly holding the pin at the edge for support. My mom was talking & I was intently listening to her when all of a sudden the electricity went off. I fell backwards onto the bed in shock & in the process swallowed the pin. Gosh I still remember that moment & my thoughts so clearly….

“Mummy, I am doing to die” I remember saying.

“Don’t worry, It’s only the electricity. Let me light a candle”

“No ma, I swallowed a safety pin” I said, all the while waiting to crash on the floor and die.

“WHAT?” my mother roared.

But before she went to get the candle, the electricity came back on and my father also came back from office. Together they searched the entire room for the safety pin incase it fell on the floor by mistake.

My father took me to the hospital where they took an x-ray and the pin was clearly outlined in the intestine. By God's Grace the pin was closed. The doc gave me a lecture about how serious the consequences could have been, had the pin been opened. The doc, then prescribed a diet of Bananas for the next week & he hoped the pin came out the natural way. I ofcourse was quite disappointed with the whole outcome. Clearly I wasn’t satisfied with the near-death experience.

After 3 days my mom fished out a discolored safety-pin out of the poop and yes they still have that X-ray stashed away. Every time they are searching for something, they are sure to come across this film & ofcourse they stop to reminisce about the incident.

Another time, my mother was stitching up a slipper with a BEEG needle & green twine when the fishman hollered from outside “Meeeeeeeeen, Meeeeen”. In her hurry to catch the fishman, she left the needle sticking up from the slipper right in the corridor and I ofcourse stamped right on the needle, hard. 3/4th of the needle went up my sole & my vocals cords lost their restraint. My mother immediately guessed what must have happened and came tearing in. But I wouldnt let her touch my feet for 5 minutes. Finally she pretended to ‘just’ look at how deep it went & yanked it out. I howled in agony and looked down expecting to see a pool of blood. But there was just a tiny spot of red on the sole. After 5 minutes I wanted to show somebody the injury and would you believe it the exact spot where the needle went in couldn’t be located. I was so hopping mad(pun intended).

But there was another incident which did not end happily. We had a German Shepherd named Toothie who swallowed an extra large marble(the normal playing marble, only a size bigger) while playing. When she fell sick, we took an x-ray & found this marble near the mouth of the small intestine. We fed her so much bananas that she must have thought all her Christmases came at once. After 2 weeks we took 1 more x-ray & this time the marble was wedged inside more firmly. The doctors offered no hope & told us to put her to sleep but we brought her back home & persevered. Nothing worked. She died exactly a month after she swallowed the marble. We buried her in the corner of our garden. It broke our hearts, u see she was our first pet.

Even now all these 3 things give me a very uneasy feeling no matter who is handling it. I try to keep the 1st two items just for necessity sake and the 3rd item is banned in the house along with chewing gum.

Chewing gum????????? That’s another story.

Just kidding, its not. Its something my husband thinks, is not safe to eat…for the kids atleast.