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2001-07-05 ... 10:28 a.m.

Title: My Fourth of July Holiday Was Rated R For Graphic Violence

by mimi smartypants

Like many of my fellow Americans, I spent part of Independence Day in the emergency room. Unlike many of them, however, my injuries were not caused by lighting 50 bottle rockets simultaneously or any other explosion-related stupidity. No, your friend Mimi, being the total spaz you know and love, managed to injure herself having a wholesome snack.

I love green apples (especially with that fucking-A delicious caramel apple dip, conveniently sold in single-serving containers: whose brilliant idea was THAT! Anyway, kisses to that person) but I can't eat them out of hand, so I always use this apple sectioner device: basically a sort of two-handled bladed circle with spoked sections. You position it over the apple, press down HARD, and the thing slices the whole apple at once into lovely little wedges.

The pressing down HARD thing there is key. It doesn't matter precisely what happened, but somehow I managed to press the very sharp thing down HARD into my thumb. Whump! Spurt, spray. Girlish shriek. (I'm still embarrassed about the girlish shriek part. Must learn to be more stoic in the face of blood.)

Speaking of blood. I later found out I had nicked an artery, which accounts for the sudden amazing gorefest. The kitchen looked like a crime scene. Blood on the cabinets, blood on the floor, blood on the counters, blood on the toaster. Several yards worth of bloody paper towels as I soaked through one layer after the other. You know how, when you cut yourself, it takes a minute for the blood to well up and spill out? Well, not so when you hit an artery. It jets out. Just in case you were wondering. (It's indicative of the way my mind works that, even in the middle of this trauma, I was noting this interesting phenomenon.)

Luckily LT was home, and boy howdy, what a guy. I think I should rent him out to people who think they are likely to have an emergency. He was very efficient in assessing the situation, was much more realistic than I about the need to go to the emergency room, and was very reassuring (kind of overly so, in fact: kept insisting I "sit down" and "keep calm" while he located shoes and car keys...I really was fine, if a bit grossed out by the whole affair.)

So: 6 stitches. 6! In my tiny little thumb! Yes, it's the cursed left hand, the same one that suffered the wrist surgery. My hands are covered in scars, like a butcher's. And any plans I had to switch careers from editor to hand model are scuttled before they even got off the ground. Sigh.

Interesting side note: At the emergency room, I felt compelled to warn every nurse and doctor who peeled back my bloody bandages to get a look at the damage that the sight would be gross. As if they don't have plenty of experience with gross, way beyond my sliced-up thumb. Although it was gratifying to hear the doctor say, as he stiched, that the cut really was "quite deep"----everyone who's ever gone to the hospital with an injury has that weird self-conscious fear that their injury is not serious enough to warrant hospital attention. Mine was.

Big bandaged thumb. I want to get one of those huge joke plastic thumbs to put over the bandage, so I can whip it out and say things like "Anyone want to thumb wrestle?" and "Going my way?" I feel confident that such comedy prop hijinks would never get old.

----mimi "down a pint" smartypants


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