Are public schools secretly trying out a new form of corporal punishment? Or is it really just bad luck that, in separate incidents in Queens and Brooklyn this week, two young students severed their fingertips in doors at school? And that both schools initially lost the tips, ensuring that they couldn't be reattached?
Six-year-old Brooklyn kindergartner Mikayla Spencer-Murray lost the tip of her right middle finger in an accident at Public School 279 in Carnasie last Monday, the same day that ten-year-old Esau Gulley lost his in Queens. "I didn't know my hand was in the door, but a teacher started to close it and I felt it pinch. It hurt so bad I wanted to cry - but I didn't," said Mikayla, whose finger was completely severed above the top knuckle. Doctors spent four hours sewing it up—they said they could have reattached the tip, but the school couldn't find it, which infuriated Mikayla's mother.
"She's going to be scarred for life—and it's worse because they couldn't reattach the tip of her finger. She's never going to paint her nail on that finger again," said the girl's mother, Sueann Spencer. Further infuriating her, Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said the agency doesn't track this type of accident. The mother of the boy who lost his fingertip expressed her sympathy for the little girl: "It's scary that this happened to another child. I'm so sorry they have to go through this, too," said Sandra Gulley. Like the Gulleys, the Spencers are considering whether to sue the school.
The eerily similar incidents are really making us feel paranoid. We're starting to wonder whether there's some little jerk in the FBI keepin' papers on us six feet high:
