The one that got away

When I was on a family camping trip one summer, we discovered a dock that had somehow become unanchored from the shore. It was large enough that we were able to essentially use it as a raft for six or so kids. We spent one afternoon fishing on and swimming around (not at the same time) the aforementioned dock out in the middle of the lake. The older cousins were planning to take turns swimming and towing the raft back to shore, but just as it was getting near dinner time, one kind boat (rather, the kind people in a boat) offered to tow us back to land.

A minute or so into the trip, I suddenly felt a strange tugging on my neck, so I reached up to find some fishing line wrapped around it. My cousin, it turns out, had decided to try to get one more cast in, and was at the moment waving her pole about trying to get it unstuck from what she thought was the lake bottom. I reached out and gently grabbed her pole, and assured her the lake bottom had very little to do with our dilemma.

My fingers traced the line from her pole around my neck where it ended in a spring-loaded treble hook with a big glob of powerbait hooked on my chin. I bit the line, tied the remaining line to her pole and waited until we got back to shore. (It didn’t really hurt, mind you; I guess there aren’t too many nerves there.) It's a good thing there weren't any girls around I was trying to impress with my dashing looks, because when we got to shore I was told it looked like I had a giant booger on my chin.

As much as I wanted to set a new trend in body piercing and decoration, it was decided that the hook should be removed. So we went back to camp and washed the powerbait off the hook, then clipped off the eye and slipped the spring off the hook. That was the easy part. You see, the proper method of removing a barbed fishhook isn’t to just pull it back out; the barb would rip things up along the way. Instead, you push it all the way through until the barb comes back out of the skin, clip off the barb, and then back the hook out of the wound.

In order to do this we had to first clip off the other two (unembedded) hooks. Easily enough done. As for the barb itself, my mother (in a calm but somewhat frantic and worried state) decided that we needed to sterilize the pliers before using them to clip the barb off. I still haven't figured out how germs, dirt, slime, or anything else on the pliers would have had any effect on the hook, but you don't always think these things through during medical emergencies. We didn't have any alcohol available (only mormons would find themselves on a camping trip with a group of 25 people and no alcohol) so she just stuck them in the blue flame of our camp stove for a minute or two to kill any germs. Then she pulled them straight from the flames and pressed them against my skin to get as close a cut as possible. At first it all seemed fine and dandy. And then I started to feel an unusual burning sensation. I quickly made the surrounding crowd aware of said sensation and after a brief discussion ("Ouch!" "Oh, it's still hot.") it was decided that the pliers should be allowed to cool a little more before the operation continue. When it was complete, I had a miraculous recovery, though a small white burn scar remains on my chin to this day.