THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 23, 1997 TAG: 9701210107
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 66 lines
Bored with the bus ride to school, 4-year-old Johnny Spencer simply could not resist putting his finger in that metal hole on the seat belt clamp next to him.
The problem was his finger wouldn't come back out.
Then it began to swell. Before long, the preschooler's tiny ring finger had nearly tripled in size.
But no one, not the bus driver, the school nurse, teachers, paramedics, not even the doctors at the emergency room in Norfolk's DePaul Hospital, could free Johnny's stuck finger.
Nothing worked.
``They tried Vaseline, lotion, soap. The paramedics tried cutting it with the tools they had. Nothing was strong to cut through the metal,'' said Johnny's mother, Norfolk resident Wanda Browning, recalling the incident that occurred last week.
``When we got to the hospital, the doctors packed it in ice to try to get the swelling down. But by that time, his finger was red and purple and swollen really big. It was getting really, really scary.''
During the commotion, Johnny, known as ``Peanut'' to his family, was getting increasingly distraught.
``My finger couldn't breath,'' he recalled. ``It hurt . . . and I cried.''
Finally, after four hours of prodding, pulling, greasing and icing, the doctors called in the hospital's maintenance man. At first, he, too, ran into problems. His clippers would not cut through the clamp.
Undaunted, he took Johnny, via wheelchair, to his workshop. There, he put the clamp - still holding Johnny's finger - into a vise and used a hack saw to slowly chip away pieces of the metal.
``When he got close to the finger, he used pliers to break the rest of the clamp off,'' recalled Browning.
At last, Johnny's finger was freed.
It took another two days, however, before the swelling went down.
But Johnny, who learned quite a lesson from the experience, returned to his Meadowbrook Elementary School that same afternoon to tell his classmates in the school's Head Start program about the dangers of putting their fingers in the wrong places.
And the next morning, while waiting for the school bus, Johnny made up a song to help him remember the lesson.
``He started singing, `Don't put in your finger in the seat belt hole,' to the tune of a Barney song,'' his mother said. ``He's been singing it ever since.'''
Browning, however, hopes the incident will send a message to school officials about the kinds of seat belts used on school buses.
``I don't want to see any other parent or child have to go through what we did that day,'' the Sherwood Forest woman said. ``I was scared to death. I didn't know if his finger would ever be okay again. It was awful listening to him crying like that.
``Seat belts in regular cars have a lot smaller holes than that one on the bus, so little fingers can't get through them. I don't know why such a big hole is in the one on the bus, especially since it's a bus for little kids. It can't be the first time something like this has happened.''
Johnny and his mother, however, hope it's the last. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by VICKI CRONIS
Johnny ``Peanut'' Spencer's finger swelled so much when he got it
caught in the seatbelt buckle that hospital doctors had to call a
maintenance man to cut it free - with a hacksaw. When Johnny
returned to Meadow-brook Elementary School, he warned his friends
not to stick their fingers where they don't belong.