Scarred for life.
When I was about 4 or 5, I received a blue toy car that I could happily ride around in all Christmas day. (Obviously, for the first couple of hours the wrapping paper and the large box it came in were far more fascinating. w/y/h)

This was in my parents previous house before they split up, moved out, then got back together again to spend their first Christmas together this year - but that's a different story all together! (I may post that later!) Anyway, the old house had a real fire, which had a decorative front that had to be removed when the fire was on since it had a plastic/polystyrene type backing. Safe eh!

So the fire had been on all day and when the old man thought it had died down he replaced the decorative front and thought nothing of it. That is until he noticed a bad burning smell in the living room. The fire had managed to stoke itself up and was alight again, but this time the reverse of the decorative front was burning and indeed melting.

Happily oblivious to said proceedings, I am scooting up and down the hall in my brilliant new car, that is until father hurtles past me with this great peice of burning and melting plastic to take it outside.
Next thing, cue screaming child as peice of melting plastic falls onto face and begins to burn. I think mum's exact words were "Oh shit".

Brilliantly, she picked me up and ran my face under the tap for about an hour, but not before I pointed out by screaming the word "finger" at her that another peice of melting plastic had fallen on my hand.
Apparently, after the ordeal I slept for about twenty hours (about average for nowadays) and was taken to the doctors the next day. He said mother had done the right thing and I would be left with two small scars.

He was right; one on my nose and one on my left hand to be precise.

I wouldn't mind, but there were patio doors about two yards from the fire that he could have used instead.

Prat.
(Roy Horn, Thu 6 Jan 2005, 16:41, Reply)