The electric doors from HELL!

To break the tradition this week of posting videos, I thought I'd actually hunker down and tell ya a story!

When I was about 6 years old, I enjoyed going shopping with my mother. We would go to the photomat together, the little one down on foothill that you could drive through. We would always do the grocery shopping together. I loved picking out plants at the nursery with her as we both seemed to share the same distaste for scraggly annuals. One day, our shopping adventure took a dark turn for the worse.

Thrifty was your basic drug store with an ice-cream counter in front. (Why they put the ice-cream section in the sunny front window is beyond me, with all the potential melting... Also, I believe Thrifty is now owned by Rite-Aid, and still sports the same basic red and blue scheme. ) The store was nestled back from the road in your very typical, late 70's shopping center. We entered the store as my mother dragged me back from the box of free kittens out front, and I asked to get a sip of water at the drinking fountain. This was really a strategic move on my part, it allowed me to wander off unsupervised for a few minutes and be at the front window of the store staring at the kitties I longed to own. I took a few sips and cautiously approached the glass window that the electric door slid back on.

*Sidenote: you know how electric doors these days slide into a pocket of sorts and no longer just back on themselves? I'm part of the reason for that....

I pushed my face against the warm glass and started to make faces at the sweet little felines. They launched up and played with the glass hoping to get through. In the periphery of my sight, I noticed a large woman in black spandex approach the door. In a split second I heard a whirring sound approach and grab my lips. *SPLAT!* The area between the door and window now had a fan of my blood dripping down it. "Oh Christ! Help!" the fat lady scremed as she ran toward me, making the door retract for a split second and then catch my upper lip harder this time. Within seconds the doors released their grip and I wandered to the middle of the entry screming and crying for my mommy. "What the fuck happened here?!" My mother blurted as she approached, sweeping me into her arms and carrying me off to the hospital. I distinctly remember the manager spewing lots of "please don't sue" "Free Ice-cream" etc... all most likely in the hopes of saving his job and the company a serious lawsuit.

Several stiches later and some serious pain, I got myself one hell of a story. How many kids can say they have had their lips caught in an electric door?