Derek Wheeler
10-9-07
Blog no. 4

“Good advice usually works best when preceded by a bad scare.” This means that advice given to someone now may seem useless until you have had personal experience. Unfortunately, I found this out the hard way when I visited relatives this summer. Every year, my family visits relatives in the Adirondack mountains in New York. My parents have always told me to not walk around in piles of boards with rusted nails in them. But as I got older and more aware of the dangers from stepping on rusted nails, it seemed impossible to happen to me.
As we were visiting, I was helping my uncle, who is a carpenter, move some scrape would from a house he built. Then we took it back to his house as firewood for my cousin’s fire pit. The next day, I was walking around with my cousin who was talking with some of his friends at his house. Then just so I wouldn’t get bored while walking around on flat ground I walked on top of the small pile of scrap would. As I did this I was watching out for nails sticking out of the wood even though I had shoes on.
Then I realized that that there were nails in some of the wood so I started walking off while watching for nails. It was only three or four steps away until I stepped on a rusted nail that I didn’t notice. Surprisingly, the nail went strain through the two inch thick souls in my shoes and I collapsed to the ground. I immediately took off my shoe and looked at the cut. It was a significantly good sized hole in my foot. Immediately, told my cousin to tell his dad. My foot eventually healed and I had a tetnis shot shot before we visited so I didn’t have to get another.