When I was in eighth grade, we had just moved to a new house out in the country. ”This yard is so much bigger!” my dad yelled. Our new house required a lot of work, specifically outside. One chilly fall weekend, when the leaves were brown, we had to till the gardens to remove the barbed weeds that had sprouted since harvest. “If we let them grow, they’ll choke the plants,” my dad stated. 

We didn’t have a tiller big enough so we borrowed my grandfather’s rusty-red tiller. His tiller had a huge frame, it weighed almost 350 pounds. Operating it is akin to trying to ride a mechanical bull. When we completed our task, we had to use two silver-colored titanium ramps to load the tiller back into my dad’s grey silverado. After about two hours of pushing the massive monster of a machine into the creaking back of the truck, we finally got it in. “That,” my dad said, “is one of the heaviest machines I’ve ever had to handle. It’s huge.” 

Some of the rust had rubbed off on my hands and clothes. I remember emitting a very metallic smell after operating the tiller. “I smell awful!” I exclaimed. 

Once we got it in the truck, we had to tie it down. We used neon green bungee cords to fasten the back end of it to the bed of the truck; then we had to fasten down the front end. We stretched cords across the dirt-covered wheels and the engine. When I began to secure the engine with one more cord, I tried to tie down the part with the radiator, which still emitted a red-hot glow, like a branding iron. Unfortunately, my arm got caught underneath the cord, pinning my bicep directly to the radiator. My arm sizzled into blistering second degree burns. ‘Wow, this really hurts,’ I thought. I shouted some words that aren’t exactly friendly, which caught my father’s attention. He leapt up onto the dirt covered bed of the truck and ripped the cord off enough for me to get my arm out. “Oh my God!” my dad yelled. “Are you ok?” Which is, in my opinion, a stupid question. “I’m fine.” I answered, which was a lie. My face reddened because in reality, the pain was so concentrated that I lost feeling below the burn for a short while. 

When I entered my house, I immediately went into the bathroom. I grabbed our medkit and searched for anti-bacterial cream and bandages. My mom dressed my burn and wrapped my whole bicep. “Hold still!” my mom yelled. Once the pain subsided, my arm was throbbing for another thirty minutes. It took nearly three days for the burn to heal enough for me to take off the bandages. When I finally took off the bandages, the burn was bright red, blistered, and barely healed enough.”It looks so gross!” Dain exclaimed. Quite frankly, I agreed with him. I couldn’t touch the burn or it would sting and peel. After a couple days with the bandages off, the burn was almost completely healed.

In conclusion, I figured out that one should be careful when handling red-hot metal. I do not, however, recommend my experimentation process. It wasn’t what I would consider, enjoyable. On the bright side, I now have an interesting story and a nice scar to go along with it.