when i was a kid i got a lot of bloody noses. i would get them sometimes from walking out of an air-conditioned building into summer heat. if i happened to blow too hard, or pick a little too high, blood would flow freely, thick and stinky. at about the age of 10, i started feeling self-mutilatory and blood was a handy little tool i used to terrify my mother. i would go into the bathroom when i was mad and give myself a bloody with the simple flick of a fingernail and then scatter the results about the yellow speckled bathroom tile.
anyway, that backfired. mommy took me in for a cauterizing.
we went to the family doctor for the procedure in my small northern california farming town. he strapped me into what looked like an electric chair without arms, and with an exceedingly tall back. there were straps. and i was strapped in.
the cauterizing iron burned hot on it's tiny tip. the tiny tip was shoved into my nose, which led to a quick understanding as to why the chair back was so high: at the first touch of the fire tip, my body involuntarily moved the only way it could, UP. i have no idea how this was physically possible, and at the time i remember feeling confused as to how i did it. when the procedure was over, i had moved at least three feet up to meet the top of the back of the chair, my butt no longer seated, my body still strapped in.
after that my bloody noses stopped and i found other ways to passive agressively retaliate against my mom.
this was 1980. seems pretty barbaric, does it not?
sounds pretty mental, i can admit.
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