Damn, I almost slipped and forgot my entry this week. This is the third in a series of posts suggested by readers in the second Kapgar Lyrical Challenge. Today's title suggested by Metalmom, who, after a few weeks of stalking many of us and us not having a means by which to stalk her back, finally opened a blog of her own a few months ago. And much cross-stalking ensued. Check her out!
I have a morbid fascination with the human body and how it works. I always have. It's a wonderful machine that God created in us and I've always wanted to understand the steps undertaken to perform basic tasks like how muscles move joints. Of course, when you're young, opportunities in which to explore this fascination are few. Biology class involved dissecting worms and pigs, not human beings. I always found this to be wholly disappointing.
So when the opportunity to explore the human machine arose, I often took it, even if it meant using myself as a lab rat.
One such opportunity presented itself in my junior high shop class. For whatever reason, our shop teacher had us glue a small piece of wood to a larger piece of wood. I'm sure he had his reasons although they elude me now. When the odd glue-based aspect to the project was done, we were to separate them and use chisels to remove the remainder glue from one of the boards that we were going to continue using for the project.
I got a little bored and, I suppose you could say, a bit lazy. When combined, these typically equate to "not paying attention to the task at hand." And that's when my chisel freed itself of its monotonous scraping task and sent itself flying through the air, powered by my right arm, into the webbing connecting my left thumb to my hand.
Unlike a lot of injuries where people don't realize they've hurt themselves until they pass out from blood loss, I knew right away that I had done something bad. I looked down at the gaping cut in my hand wondering what my next step should be.
Did I tell the teacher? Nahhhh. I sat there and played with it. For several minutes. I just kept pulling it open and examining the muscles of my thumb below the skin. Then I would make movements with my thumb and watch the muscles in action. I was fascinated. It didn't seem to matter to me that I was dripping blood, I was having way too much fun with my new anatomy kit to want to stop.
Finally a friend, who saw what I was doing, forced me to go tell the shop teacher. So I walked over to the teacher and said, rather off-handed, something along the lines of, "I'm not sure if this means I should see the nurse or not." Then I raised my hand and, with my other hand, made my wound talk to my teacher. I don't think he appreciated my attempt at humor and he practically yelled at me to go to the nurse.
I don't remember much after that. I don't remember being in the nurse's office. I'm not sure if I went to the hospital although I'm certain I must have gone. I don't even recall if I had stitches in my hand. Everything after that is a bit of a blur.
But I would like to know who got stuck mopping up my blood spill and cleaning the instrument of my fleshly destruction.
Ah well.
Hey, got a meme for you in the extended post.
Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Today's sign that the apocalypse is on us comes in the form of a CD that I picked up at the library last week. It's titled 
