Digging it out

About a week ago Spencer came home from school with significant scraping on the palm of his hand, on his hip and on his knee. I was a little alarm and asked what happened. For P.E., his class used hoola hoops to jump rope from one end of the basketball court to the other and back again. Spencer tripped and injured himself. When I heard it was the injury happened on the blacktop, I remembered the story of Tod and his permenant dirt (little pieces of blacktop gravel that are still inside of his skin). I looked closely at Spencer's injuries and decided for the moment they looked like blood spots. Well a week later, as the injury has healed some, it became evident that the spots were infact blacktop gravel. I got out my tweezers and prepared for the drama. Oh my goodness, you would have thought I was going to cut his hand off. He wailed and screamed and pleaded for a stay of execution, he bargained and begged. Of course my heart was breaking but I had to get the gravel and dirt out. It took some time but I finally got the two biggest pieces out of his hand. Poor thing began to hyperventilate. He has done this in the past and knows what it feels like so admist all of the screaming, he informed me that he was feeling, "clostraphobic," and was going to die.