So here’s what happened…
I was cooking rabbit for dinner. (Nice recipe, by the way – here’s the link.) There’s a lot of chopping involved. A lot of slicing. And that wouldn’t ordinarily be a problem. But I sometimes chop – quickly. In my zany psyche, I think I’ve learned how to chop quickly, and therefore, do. Never mind I’ve not actually learned to chop quickly. Never mind my having zero-point-zero formal training. I get in the kitchen and Zoom! I just start doing my thang and that’s that.
Warning! I’m about to describe an injury. There will be absolutely no photos, as the mere sight of the danged thang makes me queasy. And I don’t want to push that on you. Why? Feelings, that’s why. Feelings of love.
Anyhoo, I was in there, doing the prep work for the rabbit recipe. I was slicing the bell peppers. Or rather, I was jiffy-quick slicing the bell peppers, and my left index finger wasn’t quite as tucked as it should have been. And I jiffy-quick sliced a chunk of the fingernail right off. The knife cut parallel to the plane of the nail, and it was only a small piece. But that finger’s not too large to begin with (as I have girl-hands), and that small chunk of nail also held a small chunk of flesh beneath. What I’m trying to say is, it hurt like a mutha.
Mister was working in the garage at the time, and I could see that I wasn’t in such trouble as to need stitches, so I took care of the wound myself. It took 3 Band-Aids and about an hour, but my little digit finally stopped bleeding. I debated internally about whether or not I should even tell Mister, but I don’t keep secrets from him, so tell him I did. And within minutes of that revelation, he had ordered these kitchen safety gloves for me.
Now that they’ve arrived, I have promised to use them (a promise made to him and to myself), and I hope to use them in good, cut-free health. So far, they work really well. I also promised (myself) I wouldn’t be testing these gloves, as I don’t want to find out they don’t work in a dork accident, leaving me without a finger. I can live without a fingernail for a while, but come on! Me needs me fingers, man!
We all have the kitchen mishap story…here’s one of mine.
I actually HAVE got formal training in a kitchen (it’s where I met The Woman’). Regardless, late 1986 I was working a small kitchen alone and Sean, the guy that worked day shift before me needed to leave early to, erm, pick something up. In exchange for me taking part of his shift he also dosed me with some Dead-family acid, as one does.
He didn’t warn me that he had also gotten kind of detail-oriented during the day his own self and spent a part of it sharpening my knives. About an hour into the early dinner rush, a musician we both knew wandered in and startled me while I was chopping some onion and I plunged this foot-long razor into my knuckle.
The musician confirmed later that is wasn’t just me, but that the clean meat and pricisely sliced bone (after I pried the embedded blade from it) stayed dry for a long 10-count before an absolute gusher of blood poured out. Everyone that saw the butterfly bandages we eventually pieced the two bits back together with said I should go in for stitches, but without insurance I thought it best to just finish the shift. Besides, everything was so beautiful otherwise and the work was like a grand ballet what with the blood loss and the powerful psychedelics…the throbbing imposed a tempo that made everything copacetic (and, not a little bit colourful).
At some point, the evening rush abated and I giggled my way out to the bar and got a large whisky. Sitting next to me, Sean had returned. Smiling the smile only someone four hours ahead of you on this sort of journey can do, he said, “kind of puts an EDGE on it, eh?” Not generally prone to violence, I punched him in the neck then, laughing, help him up from the floor and we went back to rummage the First Aid kit for some fresh bandages as this resulted in a new puddle of blood.
The scar, 180 degrees around the base knuckle of my left index finger, smiles up at me from the keyboard as I write this. I think of this episode fondly every time I sharpen my knives.
Yow-za! This story gave me the heebie-jeebies, Dude. And though I know everyone has a tale of kitchen mishap, I still don’t like it. And seriously, your kitchen story is the clear winner. For agony.