Over-reaction?

One of the enduring memories I have as a youngster is working with my father and brothers in the vegie garden on week-ends.Our vegie patch was as large as our family. It had to be to feed two adults, five boys, two girls and any number of visitors. 

In order to produce enough vegetables to feed our family, constant work was required to keep the garden free from weeds and keep the produce in a healthy condition. I have many fond memories of my father's long arms scooping up weeds in a single swipe. My brothers and I would endeavour to emulate this practice but all our attempts seemed puny compared with his.

I also remember one particular Saturday morning when my mother called us for morning tea on the front verandah. My father's instructions were to finish the area we were working in, wash our hands and come once we were finished. Of course, no sooner had my father disappeared around the corner of the house and the competition was on to see who could pull the most weeds in the shortest period of time. Once done, we proceeded to wash our hands at the water tap at the back of the house.

Something else we admired was the way our father could make the garden fork stand upright by simply throwing it into the ground. For boys who had not yet reached puberty, this was a feat that was oft-attempted but as yet, success had escaped us.

While washing my hands, one of my brothers was pursuing this elusive goal; throwing the fork into the Kikuyu hoping it would stick. As luck would have it, the fork went straight through my foot in the webbing between my big and second toes. Once the fork was extracted, there was a square, neat hole through the skin. My brother's immediate consternation relaxed when he realised I was not in pain and when I  said, "Hey look, I can see straight through my foot!". "Cool", he said. "I wish I had one too."

"You can", I said.

Well, it doesn't take much imagination to wonder what happened next. Suffice to say, in a very short space of time we both sported the latest in see-though foot accessories. To say that we were pleased with ourselves would be an understatement.

We went around to the front of the house, beaming with pride, and exclaimed, "Look what we've got!"

I only remember two other things about this little event.

The first is my mother's scream. It was not the reaction we were expecting.

The second is the bewildering pain that came when she poured Mercurochrome on the "wound". Once that yellow solution touched our skin the pain was far worse than we expected, and importantly, unnecessarily so. Up until that point we had a fantastic talking point with our mates that had cost us nothing - no money, no shame, and no pain. Now we were subjected to baths (we had just washed), more pain (the original portion of Mercurochrome having been washed off by the unnecessary bath), a tetanus shot (those things sting!), bandages (inhibiting for any physically-active young boy), and once we recovered, two weeks of full kitchen duty (the most despised of all family chores) to help us consider our foolishness.

Over-reaction on my parents part? While I long considered this to be the case, I have noted that since that day I have never gardened bare-foot.