Stuck
I was screaming. Metal bars encapsulated my head, and the yellow Golden Arches of McDonald’s were glistening in the sun high above me. People were gasping, children crying. The fire department raced in my direction, but before they were able to reach me, my mother had already covered my entire head in slick, greasy butter.
I will never know why I stuck my head through the fence of that McDonald’s all those years ago…
…but I will also never forget it.
We were on our way down to Disney World in Florida for my sister, Sam’s, Make a Wish trip. She was going on year three of battling leukemia, while I was on year eight of struggling with stupidity. (Sam is fine by the way). We never flew due to my father’s unwavering fear of flying, so the previous morning, we all piled into the car and started the sixteen-hour drive from Nutley, New Jersey to Orlando. We pulled off Route 95 for a bite to eat, Sam and I shouting in excitement from the backseat as soon as we saw that shiny yellow letter “M” come into view.
At the restaurant, my mother, father, sister and I ate at the outdoor tables in the Georgia sunshine. I finished my last chicken nugget and admired the shiny black fence from afar.
I can only imagine what ran through my head at that moment, and I assume it was probably one of two thoughts:
- “Ooh a squirrel! Let me see if I can catch it on the other side of this fence!”
- “Let me stick my head in the fence.”
Off to the fence I ran, and straight through it my head went.
My mother screamed. “Michelle, NO!”
Another woman shouted. “Holy Hell!”
Some man yelled. “What an idiot!”
My father ran over to me and took one look. He turned his head back to my mother. “Well, Michelle’s stuck, Janet.”
My mother came rushing over. “Oh my God, Greg! What do we do?”
“I’m not exactly sure how she even got her big head through this thing.”
While all of this was happening, I heard a woman speaking to what I could only guess was the manager of McDonald’s (I couldn’t see much from where I was positioned). “Call the fire department!” She shouted at him. She seemed to be having a panic attack far worse than my mother.
The man who shouted “what an idiot” two minutes earlier startled my mother from behind. “Don’t worry, Ma’am, I’ve been here before,” he said in a thick southern accent.
“You have?” my mother asked.
“Yeah, you’re going to need something slick, like oil, and we can use that to slide her head out.”
“Would butter work?” my father chimed in.
“I do believe so,” the expert agreed.
Into the McDonald’s my father ran, and out he came carrying a large tub of butter. Then into the tub his hands went, and onto my head they rubbed. The plan worked and I slipped back through with strained ease as everyone around me clapped their hands as they let out a thankful sigh.
“Michelle! Get in the car!” my mother shouted.
“Okay, Mom,” I said, my head down low.
And we continued our drive to the most magical place on Earth.
~
I was a mischievous child. One who, if I were told “no,” would do it anyway. One who would sneak out of the house at the age of four to go for a walk down the block while my mother frantically screamed in terror wondering where her child had run off to. And one who was smart enough to know to come back home.
When I was told not to do something, I was only encouraged to do it anyway. “Don’t touch the stove, Michelle” meant “Let’s see how hot this thing really is.” Or “Don’t jump from the window, Michelle,” meant “Let’s see if I can really fly!”
What I needed were reasons behind the “don’ts”. Reasons why I couldn’t touch the stove and why I couldn’t jump from the window. Otherwise, “don’t do it” meant nothing to me. Spontaneity was my calling. Rebellion was my mission. I went through life like this and somehow managed to make it to forty-three. Well, barely, as demonstrated in my book Stretched.
Jumping out of windows taught me a thing or two though—mostly that you shouldn’t do it, but it also reiterated the point that at least some number of people (I don’t know the exact research on this) need to experience things first-hand to truly understand the consequences of their actions.
There is this saying and please forgive me if I butcher it, but it goes something like this: “A fool won’t learn from his or her own mistakes, a smart person will learn from his or her own mistakes, and a wise person learns from the mistakes of others.” And here they are—the stories that will make you wise beyond your years.