The Stick

With Muv’s birthday only a few days away I thought I’d tell you a story from my childhood. This may even be one of the reasons why I have been an anti-smoker. I’ll let you decide.

I was maybe six year and it was summer. I know it was summer because I was outside playing in the back garden of Bushy Hill Drive with my hand-me-down pram and doll. I was near the fruit trees and I found a stick. The stick was perhaps a foot long (30cm) and pretty straight, so I decided it would be a perfect cigarette. Being from a family of smokers I’d seen how it was done; hold the cigarette between the index and middle finger and place it between your lips. Remove from between the lips, pucker your lips to release the smoke, and then repeat until the cigarette was gone.
Being a stick, it didn’t burn down.

So, as I walked around the garden I put the stick between my teeth to hold it in place. Muv was in the kitchen doing something. Preparing dinner at a guess, or baking a YumYum Pie.

Anyway, here I was, walking around the garden, pushing a pram and pretending to smoke a stick. Then I tripped.

The stick hit the ground first and slammed into the back of my throat. I screamed.
Muv came running out of the house to find me jumping up and down holding my neck, crying with blood pouring out of my nose.

She asked me what I’d done.

I couldn’t speak. I remember pain burning the insides.

It all turned out well. I don’t really remember much of the aftermath, except being told to sip cool water. I know I didn’t go to the doctors or hospital. I’m pretty sure the pointing at the stick and then my neck and the hand movements of smoking explained what had happened and it was deemed a minor mishap.

I do remember hearing Muv recount the story some years later to a family friend though.

‘I didn’t understand why she was holding her neck when her nose was bleeding. Then I realised what she’d been doing. I told her that bad things happen when you smoke and not to do it again.’
I know I never put a stick in my mouth again.



PS. If you Google images ‘stick’ you get allsorts of stuff except for a stick :-)