bitflipper
Yeh, no kidding. I suffered a somewhat deep knife wound last night.
However, the actual story isn't nearly as exciting as the caption above might suggest. More embarrassing, really, as the wound was self-inflicted and accidental. The puncture went into muscle and no organs were damaged, and no major arteries were severed.
I'd gone to a local food and music festival with my daughter and grand-daughter to see a Beatles tribute band, and to pig out on greasy fair food. As one might expect, I arrived in the proper frame of mind for overindulgence in food and music. Hey, it's perfectly legal here in my state.
You've no doubt attended these kinds of fairs, which are populated with booths where sad-looking salesmen sit forlornly trying to sell hot tubs and vinyl siding, or slightly more interesting tie-died shirts and wind chimes. One of these booths was selling high-end kitchen knives. You might see where this story is headed...
The barker was extolling the features of his finely-crafted cutlery, showing how perfectly balanced the knives were in his hand. I was thinking that the sharp points on them would make them perfect for a knife-throwing circus act. He handed one of them to me so I could feel its heft and balance. It was a rather large and heavy knife, perhaps 10 inches in length. What its use might be in the kitchen, I could not imagine, but I suppose one might employ it for skinning a large animal in the back yard.
Not wanting to disappoint the demonstrator, I balanced it on my finger as he was doing. However, the pivot point I chose was not the knife's center of gravity, and it rolled forward, tip down, away from my hand and fell. Straight into my thigh, where it lingered momentarily before clattering to the street. I made a quick joke about having to buy it if I broke it and backed away from the booth.
As we walked around the grounds making an inventory of all the junk food booths prior to selecting our supper, my pants began to feel wet and sticky inside. It occurred to me that the knife incident may have drawn blood, but I couldn't see any blood - at first.
I bought an enormous grilled sausage piled high with sauerkraut, jalapenos, relish, ketchup and mustard, and found a seat in front of the bandstand, where the featured act was setting up. Delighted at seeing authentic guitars being tuned up, including a left-handed Hofner, Ricks and Vox amps, I quickly forgot about the knife incident.
Then I looked down at my thigh and thought "oh hell, I've dripped ketchup on my pants". I went to dab it with a serviette, which came away dripping crimson. Not ketchup. Oh, I thought, I should probably self-administer some first aid, lest I stain something.
My grand-daughter produced a band-aid, but I'd need to drop my drawers in order to apply it. The Port-a-Pottie was pretty dark inside, so when I got a look at my leg it was like a scene from a dimly-lit horror movie. Half my leg was covered in blood and my jeans were thoroughly soaked - but being black in color, the blood just looked like spilled hot dog condiments.
Worse, the blood was still flowing profusely an hour after the accident. I wondered how much longer it would be before it stopped, and began estimating how much of the concert I'd be able to hear before I blacked out from blood loss.
Realizing the band-aid wasn't up to the task, I set out to find a first-aid station. Such festivals are required to have one, right? Well, no. There was a booth for the local fire district, manned by an actual fireman. But he had no bandages in his first-aid bag. Fortunately, a local hospital was handing out little first-aid kits, so I went back to the Port-a-Pottie, stacked multiple band-aids over the wound and returned to my delicious Bratwurst heart-attack-in-a-bun.
The rest of the evening was uneventful. I had a hot fudge sundae and enjoyed a decent Beatles tribute act whose efforts were sadly thwarted by an absolutely dreadful live mix. I kept looking back at the mix booth to see if there was actually a human being sitting there. There was, but he was either totally inept or just there to prevent musicians from stealing the cables.
This morning I was able to evaluate the injury, and it now looks trivial. A 1/2-inch long puncture wound, easily covered by a single band-aid. The black jeans went into the washer and all's well. But I won't be digging out my knives today to compare them against those fine utensils I saw at the fair.
Ok, so here's a chance to pretend I'm practicing a writing experiment on complete and reckless insensitivity:
[I think it was a home work assignment some 35 years ago, but I'm not really sure anymore.]
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"Boy, that was
such a long post, that I didn't even read it all, despite the self-induced injury.
And btw, where's a
Forum Host to come along & do some 'edited for length' work just when you need it most?
Geez!! Some people, huh?"
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