Cold Feet or Burnt Feet?

Cold Feet or Burnt Feet? Have you ever done something as a child that was so irresponsible that it gets brought up at almost every family gathering? Most people probably have, and I most definitely have. There’s an old saying, to “have cold feet,” which means to be fearful of completing a certain action or task. When someone gets cold feet they tend to lose all of their confidence and they start to doubt their own beliefs or capabilities. Now burnt feet on the other hand is just that—burnt feet. This is the story of how I burnt my own feet. It was the summer before the second grade, and I was excited to have made so many friends during the first grade to finally have kids other than my cousin and sister to hang out with. My two best friends were Ashley Legere and Jenna Doyle, and for the longest time we were inseparable. That summer was so fun for us; we celebrated my seventh birthday at Chuck E Cheese’s, we had pool/trampoline parties at Ashley’s house, and we would spend our time outside almost every single day. The only bad part was that we would get jealous of each other constantly. If I wanted to hang out with just Ashley one day, Jenna would be mad at us for not inviting her and vice versa. On this one particular day I had chosen to hang out at Jenna’s house with her friend Samantha and her neighbor Julia. It was a smoldering hot summer day, so there was absolutely no way we were staying inside. Jenna didn’t have much to do at her house, which made me regret that I wasn’t in Ashley’s pool that day instead. As kids though, we were creative enough to find something to do to entertain ourselves, but there was something holding us back from skootering around in the streets like we normally would. Jenna’s street and all of the other streets in her neighborhood were being paved, so we were restricted to the sidewalks and her front lawn. We tried to just walk around on the sidewalks for a little while but we found ourselves not being able to hear each other over the loud steam rollers, so we decided to walk back to Jenna’s house and think of a game to play. As we sat on Jenna’s front lawn thinking of something to do, I remember looking at her blue house and wondering why two families lived in it. I had never seen a house split in two halves. Interrupting my thoughts, Jenna’s friend Samantha announced something for us to play—Truth or Dare. Samantha was older than the rest of us by at least three years, and at that age it scared me a bit. Yes, I had played truth or dare before, but I knew Samantha would come up with some crazy older kid dares. Jenna decided to ask the question first. “Truth or Dareeeee,” she asked Julia in a mischievous way. You could tell that Julia was nervous to go first as she very quietly responded “Truth”. In fact all of us seemed to be nervous to play and we all started by saying truth! But of course, Samantha had to be the bigger, older, cooler person and be the first to say dare. I had zero clue as to what I should’ve dared her to do, so I thought of something really silly really quickly. I dared her to run around Jenna’s house four times then she had to do five cartwheels in a row. As a kid, I thought the cartwheels part of her dare was the tricky part, and I thought I had came up with the hardest dare possible! After she came back drenched in sweat, she told me “I don’t know how to do a cartwheel, so can I just skip that part of the dare?” Before I could answer she promised that she wouldn’t dare me to do anything I wasn’t willing to do. At the time, it sounded like a solid deal to me so I agreed to it. Our truth or dare game went on for about an hour before the incident happened. We had all got the chance to do our fair share of silly dares, and we all learned about each other’s scandalous crushes from the truths. We were having such an amazing time, and the dares were beginning to get more and more intense. I remember that Julia dared me to climb up a tree (which I could not physically do), I remember that I dared Jenna to wake up her angry brother, and I also remember Jenna daring me to call Ashley to tell her about how much of a good time we were all having (which was cruel). And then the last dare was made.
It was Samantha’s turn to dare me, and that thought still made me nervous at this point. Her dare was simple. Her dare seemed harmless. Her dare was for me to do ten jumping jacks in the middle of the road. I thought our dares were becoming more adventurous, and then she went and dared me to do something as simple as that! As I walked over to the road I knew our game of truth or dare was probably over since we were running out of good dares. But the game didn’t end for the reasons I thought it would. As I jumped both of my bare feet onto the middle of the road, I immediately screamed and ran off. I had forgotten one important thing—the freshly paved road.
As I laid down on Jenna’s lawn, I watched the mayhem unfold through the tears in my eyes. I was in excruciating pain as I watched the tar start to imbed itself in my feet. Samantha and Julia ditched us to go to Julia’s house to avoid the confrontation, whereas Jenna was running around her house frantically. Her mother was in the shower, and both Jenna and I didn’t want to get in trouble so we tried to figure out a way to cover everything up. I waited and waited for Jenna to get me something to help, and all I could do was stare at my tar covered feet. She finally came back outside with a roll of paper towels and a bottle of water. We sat outside for about twenty minutes trying to scrape the black, sticky, hot tar off the bottoms of my toes before her mother ran out towards us.
I thought Jenna’s mom was going to be infuriated with us, but she was actually very calming. Although, I think she was only keeping her cool to ensure that I kept my cool. Clearly the paper towels were not cutting it, so Jenna’s mom carried me to their front stoop and had me soak my feet in a bucket of water until my mom made it there. When she finally did make it, my mom had two blocks of ice waiting in the back seat for me to put my feet on. My mom lectured me the entire way to the hospital. “Why would you do something so stupid? What kind of awful child would dare you to do such a thing? I don’t want you playing with that Samantha girl ever again!” I think she stopped lecturing me once we actually made it inside the emergency room, where my dad met up with us.
I was extremely lucky that my dad worked at the hospital back then, otherwise I could have been waiting in the emergency room for hours. He carried me all the way through the hospital until he handed me over to one of the nurses. I forget the nurse’s name, but I do remember how much she helped me that day. She cheered me up better than any other person by telling me to laugh it off. And laughing it off wasn’t hard at all as she was wiping burn cream on my feet that tickled like hell. I almost kicked her in the face that day only because of how ticklish I tend to get. That’s all she had to do in order to make me feel better both physically and emotionally. After my long day at the hospital, the doctor had finally told me that my feet would be alright but that I would have to use a wheelchair for a few weeks in order for them to fully heal.
That wheelchair was the best part of my summer. Because I was a kid, I didn’t find needing to use a wheelchair to be traumatic, but I did find it to be exciting. I loved being able to wheel around in stores and go really fast in it which would drive my mom crazy. I couldn’t use the wheelchair inside the house because there wasn’t much room for it, my mom didn’t want me breaking anything, and there was really no need for it if I wasn’t moving around much anyways. I was allowed to use it at my cousin’s house though and I took advantage of that.
I will never forget the summer I burnt my feet especially since it is brought up so often. My nurse had told me to “laugh it off”, and I have done just that ever since. It was one of those funny/stupid experiences that all kids go through at least one time in their lives. It was stupid because of my thoughtless actions, and it was funny because of the lessons I learned coming from those actions. Lesson learned: don’t walk on a freshly paved road.