If you’ve ever had a cast removed, or seen one removed I suppose, you’ll recognize that evil looking hand saw they use to cut it off. It doesn’t actually spin around in a circle like something Dr. Frankenstein used to take the top of heads off. Instead it just vibrates back-and-forth, and that’s enough to cut into a cast, especially an old timey plaster cast. I know that now, but there was no convincing nine-year-old me of that. I was already worked up by the look of the thing and the motor sound before the doctor even touched the cast, but by the time he got to my ankle bone it definitely felt like he was trying to cut my foot off. I howled and bucked, and I don’t remember if somebody had to hold me down, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
The main thing I take away from that is how much expectation shapes an experience. I was convinced having my cast removed was gonna hurt and I did. This happens to kids all the time. They are convinced a shot will hurt or touching their armpits or belly will tickle, so it does. Sometimes a shot hurts for a good 10 minutes BEFORE they get it. When that happens, there’s not much anyone can do to talk a kid out of that anticipatory pain. Occasionally I can distract them by getting them laughing for a couple minutes, but many of those kids return right back to worrying or crying as soon as they’re out of the moment. Afterwards, the arm or leg they got the shot in doesn’t function properly, just because they’ve convinced themselves.
Of course sometimes things do just plain hurt. For most of my career, when I took a cast off I demonstrated that the saw doesn’t hurt by pushing up against my hand while it’s running, showing the kid it doesn’t cut me. One day the screw on the blade was a little loose, and the edge of the saw was a little bent. I held the saw up against the heel of my hand and it drew blood. Since hand and finger cuts are one of my weird phobias, I’m pretty proud about how calmly I turned away, put a Band-Aid on my hand up and went back to convince that kid that it wasn’t going to be a problem. I don’t remember if he howled and bucked.