My Amputee

Did I ever tell you about the time I cut a kid's finger off at school? I'd forgotten about it until recently when I was trying to brainstorm positive reasons that our administrators in my current distict might have used to determine that our school would not have doors. Reason # 46: A door could amputate a student's finger.
See, my old school had these big, heavy 1940's wooden doors. The old fashioned kind with the little window up high to peep through. It was the first day of school my second or third year teaching and we were practicing the art of Lining Up Appropriately. My new class obediently filed through the door and began to line up against the hallway wall. My "caboose" was apparently still in training and had forgotten to close the - big, heavy - door. So I sighed demonstratively to appropriately express my disdain and pulled the door closed.
Except it stuck. I gave it a sharper tug. Hmmm. I furrowed my brow and yanked that door with all my might. Snap! It shut. There!
"Eeeeeeee!" shrieked young boy, color draining from face.
"Augh!" shrieked his teacher, not knowing what the heck was going on. He had startled me with his cry. He gestured with his free hand that his other hand was caught in the hinges of the - securely closed, big, heavy - door. I gasped and frantically began pushing on the door until it freed my hostage. My profusely bleeding, pale faced, nine year old hostage who had just been shut in a door by his new teacher.
I rushed him to the sink. We wrapped, we applied pressure, we elevated the wound. We sent the other kids to PE, no longer concerned with hall etiquette. I rushed him to the nurse.
"His hand! His hand!" I gasped, pointing. "Blood! I shut him in the door!" The nurse hustled my victim away and shooed me into a chair. I sank into it and thought of the many ways I was about to be sued. I began mentally listing all of my other job possibilities. Soon my principal got in on the action and went in to appraise the situation. He came out a short moment later sheathed in a rubber glove and carrying a Dixie cup filled with ice.
"Going to get the piece!" he said grimly as he walked toward my classroom. The piece? The piece of what? A look of horror covered my face as I put two and two together. Well, in this case, four and one literal digits. I had cut off the finger of an innocent child. I had permanently rendered a child one finger short. I was clearly about to be fired. I sat there for a long time looking around...listening to the nurse call the kid's mom...watching the principal return with the part. I timidly stepped into the nurse's office.
"Heh, heh...how are ya, buddy?" I attempted joviality as I timidly felt out the situation. His hand was swathed in a ginormous bandage.
He looked up at me pitifully. I could see the resentment in his eyes. He would never forgive me. He was about to speak. I moved a minute step closer to him and leaned in to hear his weak words. "Am I gonna get to play dodgeball at recess?" he demanded.
I sank onto the rubbery paper-covered sick bed with him and sighed with relief. I had not permanently damaged his will to live. He was going to make it. All we needed was that little piece of finger and a deft surgeon.
Fortunately, we got both the finger and the surgeon and his mother (who had 4 boys) was very cool and even let me teach a couple more of her kids. For the rest of that school year, that clever little victim was able to give me "the finger" any time he felt that things were not going as he wanted. And I gave in every time. After all, he had me wrapped around his finger.