An Exercise in Caution
“Ahhh!” erupted from the corner of the room. I was deep in conversation at the other end of the room, and just like everyone else, my ears snapped to attention. Quickly, I glanced around the room to see what exactly. The other kids in the room also dropped whatever they were doing and investigated the source of the sound. Questions were fired from every direction. But one thing was clear. Someone was crying, with a crystal-clear sound of pain and agony. People gathered around the mayhem, which was a sudden change from a short moment ago.
I had come upstairs to play earlier, leaving the adults downstairs, to play in our own little world. At eight years old, I considered myself old enough to join the other children upstairs. It was a completely ordinary evening on the weekend, and all the families brought food for the potluck. The industrious honey bees brought elaborate and time-consuming dishes and ladies who pretended to have more important things to achieve brought fruits. Earlier, we had all lined up around the kitchen island made of interwoven gray and brown granite and weaved our way around the dishes like a carousel. As usual, the children took their share first and gathered around the table. Chairs were rearranged to ensure that everyone fit around the table. With varying degrees of conversation, the meal was uneventful,with no significant impressions on my memory. Finally, everyone put their plates in the sink.
Just as I was about to go upstairs, my 3-year-old brother, insisted,” Let me come too!”When my brother really wanted something, all modes of persuasion would be employed, including constantly repeated requests, varying degrees of cuteness, and entreating pleas.
At first, my mom said, “Definitely not” because he was three at the time and really mischievous. There was no assurance of safety at all. First of all, everyone would be too occupied to watch him. The room also abounded in sharp objects. But after unceasing appeals, she finally agreed to let him come upstairs on two conditions: I keep a close eye on him and that he should stay away from dangers. I consented to watch what he was doing as carefully as possible.
At first, my mom said, “Definitely not” because he was three at the time and really mischievous. There was no assurance of safety at all. First of all, everyone would be too occupied to watch him. The room also abounded in sharp objects. But after unceasing appeals, she finally agreed to let him come upstairs on two conditions: I keep a close eye on him and that he should stay away from dangers. I consented to watch what he was doing as carefully as possible.
Of course, trying is one thing, and going through with it is completely different. I was desperate to entertain myself, so I hastily promised and dashed up the stairs. Without saying that I did not put in the effort, I have to admit that I was a little absent-minded at eight years old and I still am at age 15. To make things worse, the room was a little chaotic. Some kids were playing board games, others were on their phones, and others were on the treadmill in the corner.
And to compound my difficulties, the only thing my brother wanted to do was go on the treadmill. He repeatedly insisted on a turn on the treadmill. No matter how many times I made him stop, his goal was to ride on that treadmill. Eventually, in the confusion, I was caught up in a game of hide-and-
seek and assumed that he had learned to avoid the treadmill. Alas, Murphy’s law applied here.
In his frustration of not being allowed on the treadmill, he decided to sit near the treadmill. For some strange reason, he put his hand on the treadmill belt, and I had not been watching closely enough. At that point, a scream of pain came from that corner and my briefly forgotten promise came back to me
like a hurricane. I rushed over to the corner as quickly as possible to find that the scream had in fact come from my brother. I carried him down gently, and the adults checked to see how bad the injury was. Later on, he said that he was trying to check for a button to turn the treadmill off ( in retrospect, a costly mistake or a flash of genius) so that no one could ride on it at all.
Even though he did have friction burns, they healed eventually. One lesson he did learn was not to go near a treadmill. On a more serious note, my mistake was relatively small, a simple failure of attention. However, seeing his burns heal over the next few weeks taught me that our little moments of inattention can have unforeseen consequences. My unintentional error had a wider scope, so I absorbed the message that what I minimize in my head does affect people around me. Regardless of the fact that I was not blamed, I did fault myself for not trying hard enough to be a good sister. Albeit, it could be unfair to put all this burden on a simple machine. I can almost imagine my brother growing up to be a young man with a treadmill-phobia, and he still tries to guilt me into doing whatever he wants by showing the little scars on his fingers.