Soapbox

Respect the Blade

    I think the moral of the story is that no good can come of asking a woman to cook.

    I don't cook much these days for a variety of reasons: among them are that I'm lazy, no two people in my family seem to like the same foods any more and I never was a very good cook anyway. But I feel guilty about that, also for a variety of reasons: the added expense of eating out, the questionable nutrition and all those commercials about how your kids will flunk school and end up on drugs if you don't eat dinner together at the table.

    So at the last minute I decided to cook a little something Thursday night. After the meal I was cleaning up the kitchen (oh yeah, that's another reason I don't like to cook) and grabbed a few utensils that I didn't want to put in the dishwasher: two wooden spoons and the knife I had chopped broccoli with. None of them were particularly dirty, so I held them under running water and gave them a quick once-over with the little hand scrubby gizmo.
    A little too quick, and of course the next thing I know I've flung the things into the sink and grabbed a dishtowel, shouting "Ted! Ted! Oh s**t, I cut myself!" Of course it was one of those super sharp ninja-chef knives too, so as I squeezed, hard,  I was relieved to feel that my thumb was, at least, still attached to my hand.

   Ted, who was in the process of changing out of his work clothes, ran out into the hall.
    "How bad is it? DO you think you need to go to the Emergency Room?"
    "I don't know- I"m afraid to look yet!"
     "Well, can it wait until I get some pants on?"  I carefully wiggled the end of the thumb a bit and, deciding that all major ligaments must be intact, nodded.
He hurried back into the bedroom just as Steve's door flew open and he ran into the hall.
    "I have pants!!" he announced. "What would you like me to do?"
I sent him to get bandages and antibiotic ointment and Ted, now fully dressed, led me back to the sink and persuaded me to take off the dishcloth and let him take a look at the damage.

     I held my thumb over the sink and surveyed the wound. A decent sized chunk of skin and flesh looked to have been turned into to a flap.
     "Huh- it's really not bleeding much…" I murmured.
      ….3…2….1…. ghhhussshhhhh!

     After some discussion and wincing observation it was decided not to go to the hospital: as long as I kept squeezing, it really wasn't bleeding that badly. We washed it, wrapped it in gauze and I wrapped a cold pack around it and lay down to watch television.

   "Ted, I"m wounded" I pointed out after a while. "I really need some medicinal chocolate, and I don't think there's any in the house."
   "You have a son, and he has a car" he observed.
    And pants I thought, but still felt loath to send him on an M&M's run at 9 PM just because I was stupid enough to cut my thumb. At the next commercial break I went downstairs and rooted around in the freezer. A minute later I was back.
    "Never under-estimate the ability of an unhappy woman to find chocolate!" I shouted triumphantly and tossed him a mini Twix ice cream bar, one of the last 2 in the house. "Chocolate, and ice cream, and cookie-   in a 90 calorie package!" I gloated.

     I wasn't sure how work would go the next day with my left thumb not exactly opposable, but when I got up and peeled off the bandages, it didn't look too gruesome. I padded and wrapped it up well, to both cushion it and keep it from bending too much and perhaps breaking open again.
   By this time Ted had gone to work and I realized that I was going to have to wear slip-on shoes, because buckles and laces just were not happening with one monster unbendable thumb. (Zippers, by the way- tough with the right hand when the fly opens to the left)
   I got in the car and headed to work. The first sunglasses I came across in the van were the ones with the cute bright red frames that I got for $4 at the thrift store, but (probably because I got them for $4 at the thrift store) they sit kind of crooked on my face. The car was cold but I could only get my fingers partway in my left glove since gloving my thumb was out of the question. So I pulled up to the window at Tim Hortons, smiled at the women through my crooked red glasses and reached for my cup of coffee with my half-on glove with the flappy fingers and giant white thumb sticking up. She just looked at my hand, and looked at the cup. I hitched around and reached out with both hands for the cup.
    "I have grasping issues this morning" I said.
     "Uh…. huh…" she said.

    All things considered, I was very lucky. I was really careless and that knife was really sharp. If it had hit at a slightly different angle and bitten deep instead of sliding mostly under skin, I would have had a lot worse problems than just trying to tie my shoes. I made it through the day without banging it and seeig stars too many times, and was even somewhat productive. On the way home I thought about how sharp the blade is and remembered the way it felt when it sliced my flesh, and honestly I broke out in a cold sweat.

    So hopefully I have learned my lesson: respect the knives, and call out for pizza.