Perils of Lego Blocks
(A narrative essay for public safety)
I had just woken up on a surprisingly sunny morning, or rather a slightly sunny afternoon I realized as I glanced at a clock, when I heard a telephone ring. I immediately snapped out of my bed to answer the call, for I knew it was a friend who, in a cutesy cartoon character-like voice, would surely ask an easily answered question, “Who wants to play video games?” Unfortunately, she did not. A highlight of my week lost. Wishing I could fly or at least float, I raced to the phone as if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were chasing me through a sewer with lily pads. I was madly hopping about my messy room, which I had been trying to organize for weeks, while darting around heaps of books, fragile collectibles, and worse, old sorbet and cone sushi containers whose pungent stenches forced me to hold my nose and breathe through my mouth as if I was in a cesspool. I was also trying to answer the phone before the second ring, like when one tries to stop the microwave with exactly one second left. Just as I reached the phone and thought I had triumphed in my race against the telephonic relay, I simultaneously pressed the “answer” key on the phone and stepped on a Lego block.
I whimpered into the phone; the sting hurt, but because I am not a soccer player, I was able to withstand the pain without calling for a red card on the Lego block by squeezing my favorite stuffed animal and curling up in fetal position in the one relatively unsoiled corner of my room. My friend, oblivious to my dreadful ache, inquired whether I wanted to come over to play Portal. I nodded, tears welling in my eyes. The realization that she could not see me finally struck, and a few words managed to escape my mouth. “Yes, please…please.” She heard the strain in my voice and asked aloud if I was fine. I replied that I had stepped on a Lego block, but was okay, and mentioned I should ask my parents for permission to go. I placed her on hold and examined my injury on my left foot to determine whether it was in any shape to scooter with to her house.
My eyes widened to the size of the Death Star with astonishment as I began to survey the wound. The first two millimeters of skin between my smallest toe and the ball of my foot had been scraped off leaking fluid that was tinged with gray and brown debris from my room. Four small, identical circles imprinted with four little “OGEL” s in my pink and yellow flesh drowned under the liquid. Sharp throbs of pain and distress that caused me to thrash about wildly and mouth cusses like a pirate’s parrot replaced the diminishing shock and lack of pain. At this time, I remembered that my friend remained on hold. Oops. I informed her that I was truly sorry, but I could not go because I had stepped on an evil and wicked Lego block. “Oh, okay,” she chirped, unaware that I was suffering the worst pain of the century.
My portal to infection not only burned with the intensity of a thousand red-hot arrows shot into my foot, but also prickled, rather like spilling tea-tree shampoo into one’s eye. I had never been in more pain despite the innumerable times I had had my blood tested and the nurse had stabbed almost haphazardly trying to find the proper main vein in my left arm I do not have. How could she not comprehend this? “Have you no sympathy?” I mumbled into the telephone, but she had already hung up.
The hurt lessened, and I resolved to wash the scrape out and bandage the wound. One step later, I collapsed. It was in a place vital for me to walk, but the pressure caused the “Ouch, bloody blood blood” to return. This would never be an issue if humans could float. I army crawled my way to the bathroom from the scene of the injury, passing my dog who curiously stared at me and decided that I would make the perfect getaway vehicle from her own crime scene in my mother’s room to the kitchen even though I was moving about as fast as her lowest speed. My dog hopped on my back and sat down. I groaned. An overweight Chihuahua mix on my back on the way to bandage my foot? What other strange events could possibly happen? My mother answered that when she stumbled groggily out of her room into the hallway. She appeared not to notice me, for which I was grateful, but my dog became nervous and jumped off my back straight into the path of my ever sleepy mother. Both tripped over each other, yet continued on their way as if they never met. My mother has no memory of this incident, and my dog refuses to talk. They finally vacated the hallway, leaving me free to attempt to rush to the bathroom, although I was probably moving about as fast as a lazy zombie.
Once in the bathroom, I struggled to stand up without putting weight on my left foot. I tried to roll like a ninja to stand up, but, alas, my bathroom was too small to do so. I then scooted on my arms to the bathtub and used the ledge to pull myself upright. However, the bathtub is about four feet from where my family keeps the bandages. Rather than merely hopping, I attempted to walk on my right foot without using my left foot. Toes up, toes down. Heel up, heel down. Scrunch foot to gallop. I ended up feeling like the Minister of Silly Walks from Monty Python. I then reached the bandages and sat in the sink next to the medicine cabinet. I washed my foot with water. Ha ha! I couldn’t feel a thing. I used soap. Okay, stung a bit. I used the foaming antibiotic. Kill! Me! Now! Please…The smallest bandage that fit me was a fancy waterproof type, but it didn’t stick very well. Eh, close enough.
My injury didn’t bother me for the rest of the day until I needed to sleep. I lay awake in pain. The next school day, no one seemed to notice my sleep-deprived face, or my strange limp. Even my excessive complaining about how people should be able to hover to avoid ever stepping on anything sharp, my stories about how I had been branded like that Chinese contraband gang in Sherlock, and how I should start my own gang against Lego and start supporting Blox instead went unnoticed. Apparently, I am always like that, and so my story went unheard until now. Thank you for the belated opportunity to voice my concerns about Lego and the chance to use the vulnerability of human feet as a legitimate reason for the importance of humanity to continue exploring alternate methods of transportation.