When in doubt, leave out.

Now that I’m old I have nothing much to do and no energy to do it with. So I spend a lot of time thinking of my past life. I have vivid recall of some of the ancient past. I remember my mother telling me that when she got old, she could recall things that happened when she was a child. It was something she had not always been able to do. I don’t know why it happens, but I seem to be doing the same.
I swear this happened when I was about 2 years old.
We were at church before the service had started. I had put a penny in my mouth and somehow it went gulp right down my throat. I told my mother and she got all excited about it. I guess she was worried about it and was telling everybody to see if they knew what to do about it. I remember everybody started teasing me about eating my money. I remember wishing they would shut up and leave me alone.

Another time I stuck a blue bead up my nose. Nobody knew about the bead except me and I knew I had done a dumb thing and didn’t want them to know I had done such a thing. I think they even asked me if I put something in my nose.
I just played dumb, which wasn‘t a very hard accomplishment for me. They knew something was wrong with my nose and took me to a doctor, and he looked in my nose with a light and said it looked like it might be some kind of growth.
I still wouldn’t tell them it was a bead. I guess I thought they would think the bead just got in my nose by accident. In that day, the only anesthesia was ether. My lips were still sealed so I had to have an operation. The way they administrated the ether was to place a sheet over my head and let me breathe the fumes. I was four years old and this is they way I remember it. It took everybody in the room plus a nurse or two to hold that sheet over my face. I thought they were killing me. It only took an instant and I was sound asleep.

The next memory I have of that event was on the way home from the doctor I was standing in the back seat of the car and leaning over the front seat between my parents and asked, "What did they do with that blue bead? " Mom and Dad both whipped their heads around and looked at me. If looks could kill I would be dead. My Dad said, "So now you want to talk about the blue bead, do you?"
Thank goodness, looks don’t kill.