Show & Tell: White Lies about Nails

I'm behind on Show & Tell (and reading all your posts, sorry!) so I thought I'd pack the two latest themes together.

Taina's second theme for the month of April is naglar, i.e. nails in English. The Swedish word means finger nails specifically but I'm going to take the liberty of using another "nails", i.e. steel nails as in hammer and nails (spik in Swedish).

...So let me tell you about the time when I got a nail in my foot! A rusty nail in fact! It wasn't fun, I tell you, although it's obviously a pretty cool thing to have had happened to you, at least at that age (okay, I admit I still talk about it!).

Image from rosenskarasdiversehandel.blogspot.com

I was ten years old and it was the last few weeks of third grade (and also the end of the first three years of school, before it was time to move up a level; it was June). We had a sports day of sorts and were spending the day in a field flying kites and doing other activities. At some point we were playing at the top of the hill near an old abandoned house, or cottage really. That's when it happened. I had just jumped off the roof - our play was mostly climbing up and jumping off - when I took one step and...

I remember that it hurt more to pull back than when the nail went in... But first I actually ran all the way down the hill to my teachers and it wasn't until I sat down that I felt, or allowed myself to feel, the pain and the pounding. Luckily the nail hadn't gone all the way through but it was bleeding pretty bad and my pink trainers that I liked so much were staining quickly.

The immediate bleeding was stopped and the wound dressed but I was still in excruciating pain (as far as excruciating goes for a ten-year old). But did I say anything? No. Because later that evening my class had a party to celebrate "graduating" from third grade and also to say goodbye to each other after three years as many of us were not going to the same school or same class anymore. Did I want to miss that? No, of course not.

So I pretended. And this is where the white lies come in, Taina's third theme for April.

According to Wikipedia, a white lie "would cause only relatively minor discord if it were uncovered, and typically offers some benefit to the hearer. White lies are often used to avoid offense, such as complimenting something one finds unattractive. In this case, the lie is told to avoid the harmful realistic implications of the truth."

I guess my lying doesn't really qualify as a white lie as I didn't really lie for the benefit of the hearer but for myself. The lie was "told to avoid harmful realistic implications of the truth", but for me, not for someone else. My lie was more about being "economical with the truth", telling an "emergency lie" or "lying by omission", or essentially trying to get away with something, but it will have to do for the sake of the story :)

Image from imperfectation.com

So I told my teachers I was fine, "it didn't hurt that much", and also said the same to my dad when he picked me up. It wasn't until my mum got home a bit later that "the sh*t hit the fan". She yelled at my dad for not seeing that I was pale and just pretending to be fine and for not having taken me to the hospital (she wasn't too happy with my teachers either) while I tried to plead with her "no, mum, I'm fine, I want to go to the party, we can go to the hospital tomorrow!".

How the story ends? Well, we ended up going to the hospital where the wound was properly cleaned and dressed and I was given a tetanus shot. I was pretty upset about missing the party but secretely happy of not having to pretend anymore and being taken care of. And now, years later, who cares about that party anyway! And besides, my classmates thought a nail in the foot as pretty cool :)