When I was born, my family and I lived in a tiny, two bedroom house with a hallway for a kitchen and a backyard so small it barely fit my swingset and the dog house. It was an older house, with a brown stucco exterior and green trim, a hexagon window on the front and a big concrete patio my Dad poured when I was about two. I remember many things about that house; our yellow garage down the street, the slight bathroom with the blue porcelain, and my cerulean bedroom floating with clouds and flowers my parents airbrushed on the walls. Remarkably, though, I remember the windows most clearly. They were big, heavy, and had chipping white paint on them, with little smudges on the panes. They were old, and the windows were original to the house- so old, that when Mom or Dad wanted them open, they had to keep the bottom half braced up with a big 2x2 wedge.

I liked to kneel on the chair in front of the window, with its cold metal back and plushy covered seat, and hook my fingers out of the window and into the warm summer night. Usually it was twilight, not light out but not my bedtime yet, and the faint breeze outside tickled my fingers and my face. The 2x2s didn’t always hold the windows open because of the shiny, new paint my parents had given the inside sill, and when the wind blew hard the windows would slam shut. It was loud, and shook the house quite profusely (at least to me, when I was a kid). Despite this, I was not afraid of wrapping my fingers around the window ledge and out to feel the brown stucco in the sunset.

One night, my Mom was out and my Dad was cooking us dinner. I was right outside the dining room, at the window, and was marveling at the orange sky and green leaves gently swaying in the same hypnotic summertime breath.

“Allison,” Daddy told me. “Keep your fingers out of that window, I don’t want them getting caught.”

“Okay!” I said, but in typical three year old fashion, left my fingers there. Later, when Dad noticed I had done nothing but kept playing with the window, he asked me again.

“Allison, get your fingers out of the window right now, please.” He asked again, more irritated than before.

“Alright!” I said, just as irritated as he. Nonetheless, I left my fingers there and felt the cool wind on my face and knuckles.

I don’t remember it being a notably stormy night, and I’m not sure if there was more of a draft on my fingers than usual, but I do remember the searing shock and then bright pain as the heavy chipping window landed on my fingers. Falling backwards, I desperately tried to pull my fingers from the place where they were caught. Vaguely, I felt the 2x2 block on my legs. It wasn’t heavy like the window was on my fingers, but it was a weight that terrified me just as much.
Daddy ran to me, lifting the window swiftly and cradling my crushed fingers in the process. He set me on the kitchen counter, next to our baked chicken dinner, and I cried long, steady tears while he filled a bag with ice and wrapped it in towels. Setting the bundle on my lap, he told me to put my fingers on top, to keep the swelling down. I felt the tears, over and over, on my cheeks and tasted them as they ran down to my mouth. I was too shaky to wipe them, and in too much pain to care.

Twenty minutes passed, maybe thirty, and my fingers still hurt. Dad called Mom, slightly panicked, and asked her to come home as soon as possible. I didn’t need a hospital visit, but we did need Mom’s advice, and soon she was home. I can’t recall much of what happened after this, but I know that I never put my fingers near that window again.

That window with the chipped paint literally crushed my fingers, and in doing so it “broke” the fingers that did not heed the warnings of my parents. I did learn a valuable lesson that day, and now I realize that everything someone does for someone they care about is for a reason. My Dad didn’t tell me to move my fingers to be callous, and I had to learn that the hard way.

Everyone has a window, and everyone gets their fingers crushed. Hopefully we all learn the lessons we need, and learn to not stick our fingers in the window again when the people we love warn us not to.