The Needle

The needle.  I will never forget such a seires of events as this.  As stated before, my father did homehealth care for the majority of the time that we were with him growing up.  Stuck in cars.  All day.  Penned like small wild animals in a tiny, musty, muggy cage.  As a result of his particular profession we got to see first hand all of the tools of his trade, kept in a giant tackle box.  The band aids and gauzes, the medical tape, syringes, bio hazardous plastic waste containers, big rubber bands used to tie off the arm to draw blood.  Also, as a side note, said bands were awesome when used for slingshots.  So much power. 

I bet there was enough potential energy in one of those rubber bands to kill a person with a well-placed shot.  Combine the ingenuity I had then in making such weapons with the strength that I posses today and I would be damned if I couldn’t bring an average human male down with a sniped shot to the temple, or throat, or eye.  Or at least bring them into a permanent vegetative state of sorts.  But I digrees.

Among the cacophony of medical supplies we used to rummage through in that big box, none stood out more than those needles.  So many needles of so many sizes.  Big large needles that scared the shit out of me and teeny tiny needles so small they looked like a strand of hair had fallen on the needle assembly line and got accidentally packaged up.  Just so many damn needles. 

I never understood what my fascination was with them but fascinated I was nonetheless.  I was drawn to them.  They seemed forbidden at that age.  I knew I shouldn’t be looking at them, let alone handling them in their packages.  But I was drawn to it like a fly drawn to shit.  Coupled with angry frantic scolds from my father every time he saw us in his medical supply box only intensified my fascination with what lay within.  That’s the problem with kids.  You tell them, explicitly and sternly, not to fuck with something and you can guarantee the moment you turn your back there up there fucking shit up.  But if you act like shit aint a big deal then more times than not they lose interest mighty fast.  Afterall, we were just looking at medical supplies, nothing fancy.  But the fact that we weren’t supposed to be looking at them is what did me in on this particular day.

As I said there were tons of needles.  I mean needles everywhere.  My fathers go with the flow highly indifferent attitude permeated all aspects of his life.  Needless to say his care and storage of his medical supplies was one of them.  I can not stress enough just how many needles he had and that they were literally everywhere.  On the dashboard.  Scattered throughout the floor.  In the trunk.  Between the cracks of the seats.  How much of this was due to us fucking with his shit, or to his gross negligence, I will never know.  I can only assume we hold roughly 50 percent of the blame and the other 50 is firmly in his corner.  Also, before you are all up in arms, the needles were not completely exposed.  Like a needle just laying on the carpet.  Rather they were in little plastic cases with little tiny lids that the end of the needle stuck in.  So by opening the lid you pull the needle out with it as it was attached.  It was not complete pandemonium people. 

So on this fateful day, needles everywhere, we pull up to a house.  On our way there there was one particular needle that was laying at my feet.  A smaller one, quite dainty, with a pink plastic cap.  I picked it up, analyzing it, moving it from hand to hand.  My father noticed this after some time and immediately gave me ‘the talk.’  That is, the needle talk.  How those were dangerous.  How they could have a patients blood on them and that if I pricked myself I could get whatever disease they had.  How they had the potential to fundamentally alter my life in a totally negative way.  Concepts and ideas that were far beyond my comprehension.  I just heard bad and no.  And bad and no mean come and investigate.

Looking back I can totally see how kids play with their parent’s guns and end up shooting themselves or someone else.  That fucking curiousity can really fuck shit up sometimes.  It can be so incredibly dangerous.  We arrive at his next visit.  I put the needle back on the ground.  He hastily tells me once more not to fuck with the needles.  He leaves the car. 

At this moment I should note that this is where the 50/50 of the blame comes into play.  Because the blame is shared equally among both of us.  Who was wrong in this particular situation?  Both of us.  All’s I know is that if I had a kid and he was surrounded by potentially hazardous biological waste I would do everything in my power to remove said waste in order to create as safe an environment as possible.  My father did not do this.  His laissez faire attitude allowed him to justify his verbal warning as more than enough of a deterrent to prevent me from fucking with the needle.  He obviously should have known better.  But as should I.  I knew, without fully knowing, that what I was handling was potentially dangerous.  That in some abstract and foreign way some sort of harm could be induced by this tiny pointy object.  That bad shit could happen if I were to fuck with this needle in the wrong way.  To let sleeping dogs lie and all that.  But I couldn’t.  And I didn’t.

Start scene: my father leaves the car, and once some time has passed, that I have assessed the coast is clear, I pick the needle up.  Like countless other times I stare at it with an abject fascination.  But this time it isn’t enough.  Due to my fathers warning I just had to inspect this seemingly harmless object just a little bit closer.  Had to get a better look, a better understanding of just what all of the hubbub was about.  

I gently take the pink lid off, and with it, slide the needle out of its plastic tube.  I inspect it.  Seemingly harmless enough.  I handle it, passing it from one hand to the other.  So far so good.  And then I prick myself.  A wave of cold fear rushes through my body.  I become frozen.  The gravity of the situation begins to form in my brain as it fires wildly on all cylinders.  A small, bright red droplet of blood forms on the tip of my finger before slowly sliding down its side.  At this moment I know I have fucked up.  I know that I have done something incredibly bad, that this is the worst case scenario.  And I am frozen.  The needle, still attached to its lid in one hand, a small dribble of blood sliding down the other.  And my father comes back to the car.

And he freaks the fuck out.  Jesus he freaked the fuck out.  I literally and figuratively got caught red handed.  His worst nightmare comes to fruition.  I now, as an adult, can understand why he got so mad.  He probably thought that his son just infected himself with HIV and that it was totally his fault.  He was going to go to jail and never see his kids again once my mother and child services got involved. 

The moment I heard the door open I dropped the needle but didn’t have enough time to clean my hand up.  He already knows what has happened by seeing the wound but he needs to know what needle I picked up.  All of the ones laying in the car were clean, but at this moment he thought that I had been playing with the red biohazard container.  That I had pulled the lid off and rummaged within its filthy contents; the bloody bandages and gauze, the used needles and syringes.  The real fucking nasty stuff that again should not have been left in the car with us kids. 

After some yelling on his end and some hysterical crying on mine we finally are able to meet in the middle and deduce that I had only pricked myself with a clean needle.  A virgin untouched needle.  I can see the relief in my father’s face.  The slow release of all the tension that was previously springing forth violently within his body.  He soothes me.  Tells me its ok, that I will be ok.  That I had made a mistake but it was ok now.  I slowly stop crying and regain my composure.  We go get Wendys for lunch and everything is well again.