In my early school years, we only had round tipped plastic safety scissors that could barely cut tissue paper. As a kid, I was terrified at the degree of responsibility and potential to take another kid’s life those scissors represented.
The adults in charge when I was a kid had us convinced that if we ran with scissors in our hands we were going to kill the other children in the vicinity by accident in the most horrifically bloody and violent manner. They even showed us video re-enactments of children getting stabbed in the heart, neck, and eye complete with fake blood gushing out and Bugs Bunny worthy death performances.
A lot of us thought this was some super common way that kids were dying by the millions all across the world.
“On February 15, 1909, Millet’s 15th birthday, these “girl stenographers” promised that when the workday ended, they would kiss him once for every year of his age. At 4:30pm, they made good on their vow and descended on Millet to deliver the expected smooches. Millet tried to wriggle away, and in the ensuing rumpus was heard to exclaim, “I’m stabbed!”
According to the Times, 23-year-old Gertrude Robbins, one of the kiss-happy stenographers, rushed to his aid, but fainted at the sight of blood streaming from a wound in his chest. An ambulance was summoned and Millet transported to New York Hospital, but he died from his injuries on the way there.
Arrested on the charge of homicide, Robbins told police what had happened. Right before the office kissfest, Millet had been holding an ink eraser—not a rubber blob, but a six-inch-long metal tool that resembled a knife. When the stenographers surrounded him, Millet’s eraser was in his pocket. During the fracas, he fell forward, and the sharp point of the eraser drove into his heart.”
In my early school years, we only had round tipped plastic safety scissors that could barely cut tissue paper. As a kid, I was terrified at the degree of responsibility and potential to take another kid’s life those scissors represented.
The adults in charge when I was a kid had us convinced that if we ran with scissors in our hands we were going to kill the other children in the vicinity by accident in the most horrifically bloody and violent manner. They even showed us video re-enactments of children getting stabbed in the heart, neck, and eye complete with fake blood gushing out and Bugs Bunny worthy death performances.
A lot of us thought this was some super common way that kids were dying by the millions all across the world.
“On February 15, 1909, Millet’s 15th birthday, these “girl stenographers” promised that when the workday ended, they would kiss him once for every year of his age. At 4:30pm, they made good on their vow and descended on Millet to deliver the expected smooches. Millet tried to wriggle away, and in the ensuing rumpus was heard to exclaim, “I’m stabbed!”
According to the Times, 23-year-old Gertrude Robbins, one of the kiss-happy stenographers, rushed to his aid, but fainted at the sight of blood streaming from a wound in his chest. An ambulance was summoned and Millet transported to New York Hospital, but he died from his injuries on the way there.
Arrested on the charge of homicide, Robbins told police what had happened. Right before the office kissfest, Millet had been holding an ink eraser—not a rubber blob, but a six-inch-long metal tool that resembled a knife. When the stenographers surrounded him, Millet’s eraser was in his pocket. During the fracas, he fell forward, and the sharp point of the eraser drove into his heart.”
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/10/george-spencer-millet-kissed-to-death-in-1909.html
Someone lands on the bad roulette number once in a while.
Damn, that poor boy. To go from being kissed by a pack of young women to stabbed in the heart.
Goddamn, that’s a “monkey paw wish” if I’ve ever heard one.
(Creepy that the kid was 15 and the women were adults, but that’s a different issue.)
Growing up is realising that sometimes a blunt knife can do more damage than a sharp one.
Oh god running with scissors! I totally forgot that