Tuesday, November 26, 2002

Bleeding Infant Day!

Hey Cleveland! Congratulations! At 3 pounds, 7 ounces, your city can lay claim to having the smallest still living infant with a fresh gaping wound in all of the United States!

The premature baby has not yet been named because his parents don't want to get too attached since he only has a ten percent chance of surviving the afternoon. But in keeping with the rules of Bleeding Infant Day, Cleveland Preemie (as he'll be known in the books) has an open flesh wound on his left arm that was purely accidental. When the nurse rushed the baby into his incubator, she scraped his arm along the plastic rim of the lid and opened a half-inch long scratch which has yet to scab over thanks to the efforts of the nursing staff to keep the cut moistened (with permission from the parents of course, who will receive the Thirty Three Thousand Dollar Bleeding Infant Day Prize as next of kin should Cleveland Preemie die before the age of eighteen or sunset). And at only 3 pounds, 7 ounces, Cleveland Preemie is the smallest bleeding infant by nearly a pound and a half!

Second place goes to Janice Bradthwaite of Gretna, Nebraska who, at 4 pounds, 11 ounces, was born two months premature with a hemorrhaging concavity in her left eyeball.

Happy Bleeding Infant Day!