How I Met Your Mother had an episode not too long ago that briefly made fun of opening some consumer packaging. Specifically, the plastic shells that surround electronics and other items. The farce was opening one of these shells containing a pocket knife; If only they had something to cut open the plastic ...
Yeah. Funny easily grows from truth. I was trying to open such an item yesterday. Not to get to a pocket knife though, oh no. I had a pocket knife already de-plastic'd to do the cutting into a new toy's shell. The shell appeared to be easier to open, having had the equivalent of tack welding in two spots to seal it up. Two tacks, and I had just the tool to cut through them. I even felt confident that I had the brains to do so, as well. Alas...
The first step, slide the blade between the two layers of the shell, beneath the weld, and pry out & away from me. The first one went well. Easily, even. Half way to my goal, I was looking forward to the bit of fun I'd have setting up the new gadget. That was my mistake. If you become distracted for even a moment, Karma will kick your ass. I was repeating step one: Slide the blade between the two layers and get ready to execute step two of prying out & away. Sadly the second weld was not nearly as strong as the first; I slid the blade right through to my waiting left index finger cum knife-sheath.
I guess I shouldn't have been so diligent in sharpening the knife a few days before, huh?
So the blade goes with no small force into the thumb-side of my index finger at the second knuckle (a little research says that would be the PIP joint, if you're really obsessed with knowing).
Being me, I immediately pull back on the knife and see the quarter-inch wound happily start dripping. Honestly I don't think I stopped the knife going in. No, I think that responsiblity fell to the bone in my finger. It was a very weird feeling (I can still feel a very deep pain in the finger now). So blood is flowing, Mario is smirking at me with that "I saw that one coming" look, and I go to the bathroom to throw my finger under cold water. After a bit of a rinse, I put pressure on it and go get some paper towel to do a better job than just my bare hand.
Have you ever tried getting a single paper towel off the roll while one hand firmly holds the other? Ain't easy, but I used my head. Literally. I held the roll still with my forehead while I clumsily removed a towel with my pinky & ring fingers. I'm sure it was quite a graceful maneuver. Really. So after the third or fourth try, the industrial-strength, tight-weave sheet of paper towel comes loose. I'm certain that my verbal encouragement helped, too. Lots of "*"s and "@"s and "%$^!!*#$"s.
I let go the finger to grab the paper towel, and by the time I look back to place the towel on my finger... things are messy. I think to myself that maybe I should go see what hospital is in-network for the stitches I'm gonna need, but the thought of trying to type in that search with my forehead nixes the idea. Eh, I just need to add more pressure. Yeah, that's it. So I wipe some blood away to see where the cut is so I'm pressing on the right spot, and hold it straight up for a while, as I peek under it every 10 seconds to see if it's stopped yet (hey, I'm a guy). Ten minutes later I cinched a band-aid on to sorta emulate a butterfly.
It's been under a bandage since then (no, not the same one). I can still flex it and have feeling, so no permanent damage. Yay for the home team.
Out of the Bleu, Tool Shed
2 comments:
OOOOOOOOOUCH! Oh man, who knew I could laugh and writhe in pain at the same time?
I did something similar a year ago with a large knife being stopped by the bone in my index finger and that IS the strangest sensation. No stitches for me -- no insurance either. All is well now except that the fingerprint didn't line up for quite a while and that bugged the hell out of me!
Now, wouldn't that have been a whole lot more fun if you dripped a drop of blood on your cat's head?
Mis-aligned finger prints? I'll have to keep that in mind if I choose to return to safe-cracking... I mean, uh. ~Nevermind~
No, Mario stayed well away on the cat tower, a.k.a. His Royal Throne. I did feed him another bit of wet food yesterday; He galloped into the kitchen, but stayed back a couple feet from the counter this time. Maybe I should write a cat-training manual?
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