When I was five years old, and standing on the front porch, and the big plate glass door was shut, and nobody was opening the door fast enough, I punched my hand through the door and cut my hand on the side pretty badly. My mom freaked out, was too panicked to know what to do. A nice neighbor man from down the street drove us to the pediatrician, who bandaged up my hand. And on the way home, to reward me for being brave, my mom got me a vanilla milkshake from Burger King.
When I was 10 years old and running around barefoot in the backyard, I stepped on a piece of a decaying treestump and it went into the bottom of my foot. Because it was decaying, it fragmented into a lot of little pieces under the skin. The pediatrician had to give me a lot of shots of local anesthetic in the foot, and then had to dig all the splinters out, one at a time. And on the way home, to reward me for being brave, my mom got me a vanilla milkshake from Burger King.
Between then and now, I’ve had more than my share of medical problems, including 7 or 8 surgeries under general anesthesia. Today, I had an outpatient surgery in the doctor’s office, and now my incision is playing up on me. My mom’s not alive anymore to buy me a milkshake from Burger King and I couldn’t have one even if she were and she did. I don’t know why I am obsessing about this because milkshakes from Burger King are NOT EVEN GOOD, but I think I have developed the mental association that mom + milkshake --> no more boo-boo.