Incarnations of Burned Children

I thought this story was very interesting, and covered a topic that was somewhat chilling in how plain but fearsome it is. It was a very short story that was about the immediate aftermath of an accident in a home kitchen where a toddler was scalded by a boiling pot of water, and the reactions by the parents, specifically the father as he attempted to ease his ailing child. He quickly reacts to the problem and immediately puts the toddler in the sink to put cold water on the scalding areas, doing his best to ignore the screams of his child. At the end he attempts to remove the diaper and realizes that it collected the burning water, scarring his tormented child in the nether regions, and then he thinks through the reprocussions of what this event has done for the future of the kid. there were a number of things that I liked and a few that I did not. The story, bing very short, was able to build and hold tension throughout the entire piece. It was impressively done, doing a good job to convey how hectic and worried the event would be in real life. It also does a good job of conveying the emotions without spelling them out for you. It is all so bunched together that it shows how quickly the event and thought pass through in a situation like this. I didn't feel like the voice that was used was necessarily helpful to the piece in driving it forward. The use of 'mommy' and 'daddy' placed the reader in a third party observer, but I simply found it to be a little bit odd, especially when the emotion and tension of the story seemed so personal. On the whole, I thought it was very moving, and painted what I assume to be a fairly accurate portrayal of this disturbing event.