My Christmas Wish Is Good Health For All

Or: how I injured myself at the last holiday celebration in the most ridiculous way imaginable.

The picture above is of a Halloween pumpkin decoration. It has batteries and a switch, so it can project light through the eyes, nose and teeth. It also has a string, so it can be hung up from a hook.

Spooooky!

The pumpkin had a stint as a night-light, and then out the front of the house during trick-or-treating, before coming to reside in our "extra room"... that is the bedroom near the kitchen, away from the others, which has three roles:

1. Study for working from home;
2. Room for storing childrens toys and books; and 
3. Dumping ground for things without a place.

The Halloween pumpkin fit into category #3.

One day, toddler O discovered it was there and decided to take for a walk, holding it by the string as he ran up and down the hall.

The pumpkin got damaged, with its plastic exterior suffering two significant dents from bouncing along the tile floors.

This is one of the many reasons we don't have a dog.

I assured the older brothers R and J that I could fix this. So I placed my hand through the mouth, and pushed the sides of the pumpkin back out. Too easy!

Then I tried to get my hand back out too.

The problem was that for my hand to push inside it went past the smooth plastic teeth. But coming the other way, the plastic is jagged.

The Halloween pumpkin was biting me!

Here is the damage immediately after:

And six weeks later, I have a small but visible scar from the worst "bite mark", in the middle of my wrist:

Just to be clear, I have a scar from a plastic Halloween pumpkin decoration.

So this Christmas I'm looking very warily at the star atop the tree, which is very pointy. I'm sure there are many implements of death that could spring out of a Christmas cracker and attack me. And the gingerbread house is all cracked foundations and faulty wiring.

Death trap.