Watch Out: The Road Burns!

I don't know quite what to write, all I can think of is the searing pain in my finger. Never mind what I did to it, just suffice to say that it is bleeding, don't worry though, I can't see the bone this time. My job is affectionately known as slaving, because we are paid an absolute pittance to stand for long hours lifting heavy items, being yelled at by ignorant customers who can't read price tags and having our hands torn apart and from time to time our legs and feet cut and covered by glass shards. Comrade, if you dare mention anything about Capitalism the West or the fact that I don't really work hard I'm going to stab you in the eye with my bleeding finger! I know I have it loads better then most of the world but if you comment anything nasty about this post I'll have you dragged in front of the other Revolutionaries for a formal hand comparison and let me tell you right now I wont be the one with the sweet, soft hands of a bourgeois.

I stared at the line of disgruntled customers, I couldn't close my register without getting into a lot of trouble. So I groped under the register for the piece of duct tape I knew was stuck there, wiped most of the blood onto my skirt and stuck my skin back together with the tape. I know, it's not the most intelligent thing to do but I was desperate and it worked okay, I stopped dripping blood and I didn't have to stop working. I'm glad the customers didn't notice, they were talking and I covered it up quick. It's bad enough I had to see it, I don't think they needed to see too. I pulled an emo and swung my hair in front of my face so that no one could see the tears. I'm not too sure how to get the duct tape off now without ripping my finger open again. Maybe I'll just leave it on until it stops being sticky and slides off by itself.

I tried to distract myself from the pain by thinking of something else, didn't really work though since all I could think of was other times I'd been hurt. Like the time I got hit by a car. Don't worry though, it wasn't bad. I didn't break anything and I didn't get flung across the road and I also didn't tell anyone. So Mum, I know you read my blog from time to time and so if you're reading this post, let me assure that this entire next section is a total lie and I was never hit by a car and it certainly wasn't on my bike and I definitely didn't hide it from you or lie about it. In fact I've never lied to you about anything I've done...and since we both know that isn't true I suggest that you should stop reading, NOW!

The roads here get very hot during summer, hot enough to fry an egg. I know, because I've tried. I also know that they get hot enough to make your feet blister if you spend more then a couple of seconds standing on them. I never used to wear shoes and so every time I had to cross a road I would race across it and bound onto the grass on the other side and jump up and down to try to cool them. I found that if I had to cross too many roads in a day I would have burnt my feet enough to blister them. So when I used to get home in the evening and I would sometimes crawl around the floor it wasn't because at ten I still wanted to be a dog, it was because my feet were burnt. Because of the heat of the road I was always terrified of getting hit by a car. Actually, I was only terrified of getting hit by a car in summer. Any other time of year and I wouldn't have cared so much. I was scared that I would be so badly burned by the road if I was lying on it that the burns would be worse than anything the car could do.

I was partially right. One day I was riding my bike down the hill and a car came speeding out of a drive way. Neither of us saw each other until it was too late. We crashed into each other and the bike and I went flying over the boot of the car. The bike landed on a fence and I landed on the road. The car was fine. My shirt had been pulled up and I was lying on my side, bare skin on the road. I can't have been there for long because by the time the pain hit me the driver had only just opened his door. I was burning, on the road! I'm telling you I've never moved so fast in my life! The second I realised that the pain wasn't related to my cuts but was actually because I was being burnt I was up and off the ground! The poor driver, he was so shocked, me though, I was more worried about the road. The burning was worse then the ripped skin, the gravel or the blood. Poor driver was staring at me hopelessly and I was staring at my side, I hadn't even noticed my cuts, it was the burn I was worried about.

Long story short I insisted I was okay and asked him to lift my bike of the fence so I could ride home. He offered to drive me home but I needed time to think. My mother would have freaked out!!! There was no way in hell I was going to tell her what had happened, she'd never let me ride my bike again! Or leave the house. Took a long time to get home. The bike was pretty much fine, pedal was a little bent but I was shaking too badly to ride it so I walked it. I was a very sneaky child. If you're an only child and you do as many stupid things as I did you get used to hiding things from you parents. It's not like you can blame something on your sibling and there's no back up child in case you die. I didn't want them to worry and I didn't want to be banned from doing things. So I would hide most of my scratches under clothes and just not mention anything.

This time was hard though, I'd never been hurt like this before. I got home and snuck around the side of the house. Left the bike and my dented helmet where they couldn't be seen and tiptoed up the back stairs. The aim was to get to the bathroom, take the tweezers, tea tree oil and band aides to my room without Mum realising I was in the house. I had to hide behind a door for a while, waiting for her to leave a room so I could get to my bedroom with the stuff.
I stripped off my clothes and wiped up the blood, picked out some gravel, bathed every cut with diluted tea tree. I won't describe the way I looked, just know that there was a lot of blood and the skin was hanging off in places. Then out came my emergency clothes, I was well prepared for situations like this, though this was by far and away the worst. For arm cuts I had a thread bare jumper and for leg cuts, an old pair of shorts which were a little longer then any of my other ones and covered my knees. I put a few band aides on my leg and on my fingers and one on my cheek. Every thing else was covered by clothes and this way I could say I fell off my bike and the damage didn't look too bad.

It was only my right side that was hurt so I tried to keep that part of my body turned away from her as much as possible for the next few days. I didn't change my clothes either because I didn't have anything else that would cover as well. It was hard to keep it up though, every time she would touch me I wanted to cry. My sweater rubbed against the burn, it was bad, it was bright red and it blistered very painfully. I went through an entire container of paw paw cream trying to keep it from scarring. I developed an addiction to children's Panadol too, I drank the entire bottle within two days and then pretended to have a bad headache so she would go and buy some more. I completely got away with it and was back riding within a few days, she didn't find out, she didn't yell and I didn't get into trouble for doing something as stupid as getting hit by a car. And I found out I was right to be scared of the road. Sometimes I thought I should have told her but she would have been so angry and she wouldn't have been as careful cleaning my cuts as I was and I know I would have been banned from leaving the house for a long, long time and definitely no bike. And it was good practise for when I had to hide the bruises from falling out of the tree six months later. I think I actually broke a rib that time... didn't tell her about that either, not that it would have mattered. Not much you can do for ribs and I tied myself up pretty well and anyway, I hated sitting in the hospital emergency room. Soooo boring!!