DO NOT EAT THE ICE!!

Three things my mother told me during childhood still reverberate in my mind,

1.) “Don’t hit your brothers!”

2.) “When sharing between two people; one person cuts and the other person chooses,” and

3.) “Do not eat the blue ice from ice packs.”

The first one was unfortunate because hitting my brothers was one of the best past-times allotted to me. The second one was extremely wise and I still utilize it to this day. The third one I took a little too seriously, at too young of an age.

I was 5 years old and some stupid girl “hurt” herself on the playground. “Hurt” means that she was more embarrassed than physically injured and wanted some ice to justify her loud “BooHoo-ing.” Our Yard-Duty (yeah, remember those?) gave her a little plastic baggy with two tiny pieces of ice in it to justify her sobbing to the peers who had gathered around her. She instantly calmed down with this magical bag of ice placed gingerly over her elbow. As tears turned to sniffs, the rest of the class went back to their recess games. For some reason I kept watching her long enough to notice that the ice was dripping out of the corner of the bag.

She raised the bag to look at it and started drinking the water that dripped from the corner. She was drinking the water from the ice pack!

I was mortified! My mom always taught me to never lick the ice she used to heal our wounds. Remember, “Do not eat the blue ice from ice packs?” Well, five-year-old me certainly did!

 "DO NOT EAT!"

However, my “five-year-old self” didn’t realize that my mom was referring to those blue ice packs you keep in the freezer for emergencies and the Yard-Duty only gave this dumb girl two pieces of normal ice. I thought this girl was going to get sick and die because her mom never told her to not lick the ice.

TOTALLY FINE TO EAT! 

(You will, in fact, not die from licking it as it drips out the bag!)

(Rebekah found this out too late!)

I stormed over to the girl and warned her solemnly, “You can’t drink that. You will die!”

I do not remember exactly what I said. It was probably much more morbid and worse than this general interpretation; because next thing I know, I am on “Time-Out” for 10 minutes.

I never apologized and I never understood why I was on time out. I remember sitting on the bench kicking my legs forward and backwards being confused. Mostly I was thinking, “This is not much of a punishment for someone who probably saved that little girl’s life.”

From my “Time-Out” corner I saw her spit out the water she had sipped from the ice. She knew I was on to her.