Science experiments… an 11 year old, a magnifying glass, newspaper, wood, and a lighter

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Just based on the items mentioned in the title, it is fairly apparent that this was not a school-led science experiment. His school experiments seem to include items like food color, water, and a flower. Flamable agents and explosives almost never seem to make the school list – but I digress.

The ingenuity of children is really amazing. Using items he found while scouring around the yard, he was able to hypothesize and then test his hypothesis.

Both amateur and professional scientist will notice that safety goggles did not make it into his makeshift lab equipment list.

First off, let me head all those “better” parents off at the pass. Yes, we have warned our son about the dangers of playing with fire. We’ve done this repeatedly and on many occasions. However, we did not warn him at this particular moment and this particular time for this particular fire – apparently, that is where we dropped the ball.

And in his defense, he had not been able to find his magnifying glass for almost a year. The sheer excitement of the find clouded his judgment. Hey, wouldn’t it have clouded yours too?
Add to that the total lack of ants or other insects in which to steer the searing light of his hand-held death-ray, and gosh, what do you expect?

We were noticeably absent, having taken our daughter to gymnastics up the street. It came as a phone call from our 17 year old.

“Mom, Christopher really ‘f’d up his eye.”

Now, my son doesn’t gratuitously curse--much, so this got Mom’s attention. Not enough that we rushed out of gymnastics, however. She was worried but that had been tempered by the fact that we had been to the emergency room 4 times in the last month – officially, we have been automatically entered into the Frequent Trauma Program. We are just waiting for our discount cards.

When we got home we found out that Matt’s medical assessment pretty much summed it up. Chris had a small cut below his eye and his eyeball was a reddish tinge with blood pooling up in the space between his lens and pupil. This, we discovered later, is called Hyphema. Although a more accurate description is MomisFreakinga but we aren’t expecting a change to medical text just yet.

Christopher’s upper chest and neck were covered with black ash. Apparently, his little explosion was pretty severe. We went out to where he was building his little blaze to investigate and discovered a couple things..

There was debris behind me a good 8-10 feet.
Notice the brick barrier - Safety First!

1. It was still burning. Apparently, neither Christopher nor older brother had thought to put out the fire.
   
2. Small pieces of smoking wood had been blown nearly 15 feet away from the fire pit.

We rushed him to the emergency room and waited in various places. We waited in the lobby and then waited in his curtained room.

It was a busy night and although we were in the children’s emergency area, older folk were being put in there as well. On one side, we had a mom whose son has crushed his hand. I didn’t see anything but they brought in a portable X-ray unit and when the X-ray tech was speaking to the doctor she said something like…

“I’m going to film it this way because this part keeps flopping around and getting in the way.”

Any way you slice it that could not have been comforting to either the kid or the mom. Based on how it was said, whatever was flopping was not normally a flopping part of the body.

On our other side of us they placed one of the adult visitors. Not sure what was happening there except we heard terms like, blockage, backed up diarrhea, and enema. And then overheard the nurse say some choice phrases like…

“This lubricant will feel kind of cold.”

And

“You might feel some discomfort now.”

I turn around and there is Laura laughing like a juvenile - not good! Both of us carefully and quietly move our chairs as far from the curtain as possible. We were already dealing with one explosion.

Finally, Christopher was seen. They put some dye in his eye and looked at it with ultraviolet light. You could see a slice right across the front of his eye, from one side to the other. Also, the blood behind his lens was covering about half of the colored part of his eye. They took X-Rays and found no puncture wounds or debris in the eye – which is good.

He was asked how/why he did this and explained that his older brother taught him. We've always encouraged our older kids to tutor the younger ones but we think that warrants a friendly conversation, don’t you?

This morning, we had to go to the Ophthalmologist and they did much the same thing. A recheck is due this week but they expect several days of blurred vision. Chris’ eyes were dilated so he is wearing sunglasses provided by the Doctor’s office and cannot take part in physical activity. I guess that means he misses his hockey games for the next couple of days.

Cool!

Kind of funny phrase from Christopher. As the doctor was checking his vision using the eye chart, he tested his right eye first. Actually, amazing vision. He was reading stuff so small that they doctor pulled the chart away and looked at the line Christopher and shrugged - a little shocked. On his injured eye, however, things were much worse. He could only read the really big line with two letters.

When the doctor presented the next line, Chris said, "It's at this point that I can't see."

Besides some family memories, what did he learn?

Well, first of all, stand further away from the flame when you throw explosives into it. Also, shield your eyes if you are not wearing protective lenses.

Now pass those lessons on to your children.

We are exploring legal options. The list of people to sue is pretty well limitless in this case…

• The brick maker. There is no warning, what-so-ever on the bricks that inform us that they are not a shield against flying debris.
  
• The magnifying glass manufacturer. There is no warning on the magnifying glass that explains that using it to build a fire and then throwing a lighter into it can cause bodily harm.
  
• The lighter manufacturer for failing to note that explosive liquids explode.
  
• My parents. Yes, this one isn’t even a stretch. They failed to inform my wife and I that every stupid thing that my brothers and sister and I did growing up is destined to be repeated by the next generation. I should have realized this after my oldest son broke his hand jumping off the slide into the pool.

Thanks for reading - now off to the next minor emergency..