puddlin', puddlin'

The transition from Starbucks to Tazza Mia has been bloody, to say the least.

On my first day back I all but sliced the top of my thumb off—the upper part of my thumb was hanging there like a loose flap, barely attached—and had to rush to the E.R. to get five stitches.

Okay, it goes like this. I’m in the back just doing my own thing, slicing cucumbers like a boss, perfect and straight cuts, really something beautiful. But, you know, I’m alone, and cucumbers, to be honest, have always had this sort of “draw” for me. I don’t know how to explain it; not so much a fetish, more like an off-the-wall fascination. They bring about a heightened sense of awareness to most things. So I’m standing there slicing the cucumber, faster and faster, tunnel vision setting in, and all I know is my hand and the knife and the cucumber flailing about under my power. I’m in the zone and then all I know is pain. My heart freezes. I draw the blade up. It’s speckled with blood. And then my hand: blood’s already trickled down my finger and is pooling like a growing amulet in the palm of my hand. The blood seeps from under the flap’s hood, and it’s coming out like these tiny air bubbles that burst and then bleed blood (which is to reiterate the nature of bleeding itself). The cut’s deep, but it missed the nail and the bone. I say a foul word under my breath—not sure which, to be exact; there’s so many in my daily repertoire—and then John comes in and I look to him and point to my thumb, telling him that I cut myself and he says we need to throw away the cucumbers because there’s blood all over them, and there’s even blood puddlin’ up on the counter’s edge and dripping like an amorphous waterfall to the ground where it puddles again at my feet.

Puddlin’, puddlin’, that’s what the blood’s doin’.

From my thumb to my hand to my arm to the cucumbers to the counter to the floor. It’s kind of like “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes.” Or like a slinky or that old childhood game where you’d create odd assortments in the style of Inspector Gadget and if you were cool like me you’d play the theme song while watching the marble go contraption-to-contraption, dancing around pulleys and levers and bridges and swings, and we build it all around the concept of gravity which some scientists now are themselves beginning to question (but it was pretty damned reliable with the marble game).

We quickly search for gauze or even a band-aid, but the entire store’s bankrupt. Cat comes back and sees me standing there with razor-sharp eyes focused like an eagle in heat on the razor-sharp wound that’s gurgling like an artesian fountain. She staggers for a moment and then rushes across the street in a mad dash for C.V.S. When she gets back we’ve got my thumb wrapped in paper napkins with a glove overtop and the glove’s thumb area is incandescent with blood, that kool-aid color that makes you crave sugar when you’re nothing but plain-old thirsty. About fifteen minutes go by and I remove the blood ever-so-carefully above the trash can and survey the wound. John’s leaning over my shoulder and two other people are crouched by the door, half inside the room but anxiously remaining there, perhaps fearing that this moment would become catastrophic for their well-being. The upper flap’s still just flapping around like flaps do and the bubbles are coming forth without restraint. So I leave everyone and have to go to the E.R. to get stitches. I get the five stitches, come back, and with my thumb throbbing in pain (once the Novocain wore off), I worked an extra hour and a half to get the store back in working order. No one expected me back, so that made a good impression.

In all seriousness, I really enjoy my job and the people I work with. My knife skills are definitely improving (at a rate quicker than you’d expect for someone with pudgy clawed koala paws), though I’ve got a few nicks along the way. And while I may have almost bled out, the wound is healing nicely, and I’m even able to type. And in all seriousness (again), irony continues to overshadow and serve as the underscore to my life: not ten seconds before slicing open my thumb, John reminded me that if I wanted I could use the steel-mesh glove (it makes me feel like a knight, and that may honestly be one of my primary reasons for now wearing it, even post-stitches). I told him, “I’ve got this down, Man,” and then immediately after I was making it rain (here referencing the spurts of blood as opposed to glitter).