Beads: The Prepubescent Foe
I can clearly remember the intense stare in my mother’s eyes that afternoon, along with the cold and frightening touch of metal. I was 5 years old and my curiosity had gotten the better of me, as per usual. It wasn’t until I noticed my throbbing nose and an inability to breathe easy that my curiosity realised the dire situation I had put myself in: I had shoved a bead far up my nose, and it was not about to come out.
It was canary yellow and looked distinctly akin to the mystery sweets elderly women always seem to have on their person, the ones no one knows where on earth they had come from.
It can be noted I had just undergone every ‘home quick fix’ my mother could think of, from blowing through my nostril so hard I thought my tiny head might explode, to that of having water poured up my nostril in an attempt to “flush the bead out” (this instead of the intended, seemed to resemble a version of water torture).
So there I was, wheezing on my mother’s bed as she frantically shuffled through every household drawer she came across, in search of something that could liberate her daughter. That was until the window’s light flickered on the infamous pair of tweezers that I deemed “the jabber”.
As I shuffled about on the mattress her grip grew tighter on my form and the cold metal was promptly shoved up my right nostril. If I wasn’t crying before (I was), I certainly had the tears flowing now. The bead had been pushed up further, with a tiny ounce of blood now trickling down my face.
After this went on for quite some time, the appealing mixture of tears, blood and nose liquids streaming down my face, my mother managed to dislodge the bead from inside my nose.
Debacles such as these are in fact not an uncommon occurrence, says Sue Lyon, nurse of over 30 years.
“Kids are jamming things up their noses all the time, also ears are another favourite. Nasal passages are the definitely the preferred orifice though.”
The Epworth Hospital nurse also warned me, as well as other parents, that what my mother did to remove the bead on that horrific day was not how it should have gone down.
“If you cannot see the bead you should not go poking around in there, especially with young kids. Although a trip to the emergency room may be seem annoying and pointless at the time, it’s much better than running the risk of pushing it farther up, or even so much so that it travels back into their throat and into the lung.”
The ER procedure itself often involves using a pair of forceps or a miniature vacuum to retrieve the child from the clutches of the miniature bandit, if no natural methods such as sneezing and blowing the nose firmly work.
A method, of course, any young child would find drastically horrifying.
This begs the question; why do parents decide to allow their children to play with products so darn small, when in the long run the young are in danger from them?
In 2007, a popular new children’s toy hit shelves worldwide, known as Bindeez. The product, created by Melbourne company Moose, advertises itself as being “magic beads” which stick together when sprayed by water creating 3D artwork.
Unfortunately for the product’s designer, the main “magic” it became known for was of the GHB kind. GHB (gamma-hydroxy butyrate), otherwise known as “fantasy” and a date-rape drug, was found in the glue coating of the product and made children ill when it was metabolized. Ingestion by these minors was resulting in a variety of symptoms, such as comatose, respiratory depression and seizures.
Not inclusive of the likes of myself (I had had enough with beads at this stage of my life), the Bindeez products became in great demand from the older generation of youth, specifically teenagers. Schoolies goers were urged in the latter of 2007 to resist temptation of the beads for an easy high.
This of course is indeed ‘understandable’, unless you have not yet been traumatized by the seemingly innocent molds of small, rounded plastic and have a hankering to get high by eating all the colours of the rainbow.
This defect drove the company to enforce a total recall of the product, beginning with Australia, as well as a total re-branding and ingredient replacements. The toy now goes by the name of Beados, and have been tested to make sure that absolutely no harmful ingredients have slipped into the new toy on the shelves.
So, to bead, or not to bead? That is the question. A rather simple one in fact. One with the answer of no.
No matter which way you look at it, these manufactured rapscallions are out to get our youth. Whether they be in the simplest wooden form, or have evolved to harm our children and intoxicate our young adults, beads are bad news.
Every bead is a threat. Make the change and eliminate them from your lives now.
