At this very moment, my fingers are tingling as I think back to the time my fingers crossed the business end of my mom's sewing machine. I was four-years-old and my mother was letting me stitch together some scraps. I flipped the speed switch from low to high, pressed my leg against the leg-switch and the fabric leapt through the feed dogs. As the my fingers were pulled toward the needle, I tensed up and gripped the fabric against the throat-plate and, my legs gripped the chair. As I gripped the chair, my legs splayed pressing the leg-switch farther. My tiny fingers zipped through and were sewn together in a flash. The needle stitched large straight stitches across three of my fingers near the first knuckle. I pulled my fingers away from the machine, now with fabric scraps attached to them, and my mother pulled me over to her lap. She quietly calmed me and snipped the stitches one by one, pulling out the threads with tweezers. My angel was working hard that day as the needle had missed every bone and there was no permanent damage.
That ended the sewing lesson for the day and left me with a vivid memory that remains with me to this day. With the retelling of this memory, I cannot resist rubbing the area that got stitched together and and 're-feeling' the tingle of panic.