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“Mom, remember the curling iron is heating. Don’t burn yourself again,” my daughter warned. Of course I would steer clear of that threatening monster in the bathroom. I had not forgotten the day I pushed a heating iron aside with my hand instead of using the handle.

Believe me, I turned it loose fast. Pain seared my fingers. It was all I could do to hold back tears. I was angry with myself for doing such a stupid thing. I raced through the house and out to the back steps where I snapped off a piece of aloe plant. I squeezed some liquid from it on to my burned area and gave the inside of my little finger an extra dab. It was really hurting. After a few minutes, the pain eased. All my fingers except a little finger looked fine. Under a layer of skin a thin blister took shape, but the pain was gone and I had no more problems with it.

I remembered that years ago my mother dabbed butter on minor burns. To me, it seemed to make the hurt hotter, but that was the recommended method at that time. Another method I used through the years was to submerge the burned area in cold water and keep it there for a little while. The liquid from the aloe plant worked so well to drive the pain away that I did not use the cold water method that day. I used ointment on the burn that night to avoid infection.

As I thought of the butter method for burns, I remembered something I read that dispelled what I had heard for years. Maybe your mother, like mine, told you reading in bad lighting was bad for your eyes. According to experts, reading with poor lighting can cause muscular tension, eye fatigue and headaches, but it does not damage our vision. Well it turns out that our moms were still looking out for us and offering good advice, even if she was misinformed. Headaches, eye fatigue and muscular tension are all something we can do without.

I found something else I had always believed was a little different from the truth.  You know how in our sandy south Alabama area some youngsters eat sand despite our efforts to prevent that. I always thought it was dangerous. Well, consider this. The basic component of sand is silica. Experts tell us that as long as a substance itself is not toxic, almost anything taken in powdered form, like sand, is harmless Whether it is true or not in my book, eating sand is not a good idea for man or beast and I would still try to prevent my little ones from getting sand in their mouths.

These days I do not have any little ones to worry about eating little fistfuls of sand. However, I do have to watch myself around curling irons that are in the heating stage.