My four-year-old grandson is nearly fearless. He launches himself at you—or off the couch—with all the reckless abandon of someone who still doesn’t quite understand the physics of the world or such fundamental concepts as gravity and the effects of sudden, forced stops on the human body. But he’s learning. And we’re trying to educate him about these things without him having to experience too much injury.
I said he was nearly fearless. Earlier this year he accidentally slammed his own little finger in the pantry door. My daughter heard him screaming and found him standing bewildered in a pool of his own blood, dripping from his finger. Fast-forward through the trip to the emergency room and the subsequent sedation surgery to rebuild his little finger, and the weeks of his hand being bandaged and re-bandaged repeatedly. He really came through it all like a little trooper, and his finger has completely healed so you’d never know it had happened. But he is a different little boy than he used to be.
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