On proper knife handling.

**Tenebrous** · Posted On: 8/25/2011 6:38pm

I was opening a package with a overly large knife today, when it snagged on something, cut free just as suddenly, and went into my leg. I think my dad always used to tell me to cut away from myself. At 30 I remember about 50% of the time. Maybe by 60 I will remember every time.

I had, as a reflex, pulled it back out as fast as it went it, So I was stuck staring at an inch long hole in my shin. It went in mostly sideways, so while nothing important was damaged, it does gush decently, and does not fit together. So stiches are expensive, and I don't really care about scars anymore. It's a shin, and I'm not really frightened by the sight of my own blood anymore. I have been injured too many times over the last half a decade for that to really be frightening.

So the skin flap comes away with the tissue paper. And I wonder whether it didn't hurt because the nerves are damaged from years of sporratic attempts to learn muay thai, or whether near daily randori has bludgeoned the squeemish out of me. In any case, it has certainly made me a much calmer person, so I decide to stop wondering why this doesn't bother me as much as it should and patch this thing together. Then I think, I was sitting cross legged, at least my shin was in front of my testicles. My shin seems fine by comparrison.

We don't have any medical supplies. "What would mcguyver do," I ask myself. He'd clean this bitch out with something with some nearby thing with decent alcohol content. What do desperate drunks reach for? My shin won't be getting gingivitis any time soon. And when I feel nothing, I figure that it's more dead nerves than manliness in action, after all.

So I shave the hair off my my lower leg. Apply the old tube of ointment fished from the back of a drawer. Strap a maxipad over it, and sports tape the lower half of my leg until it looks like a roman sandal.

Now I can focus on the more important things, like being a little smug about being slightly less of a wuss than years prior, and choking people without bleeding through my pants. I can't help but think the me from a decade ago would have been paralyzed, and that he probably only remembered to cut away from himself a quarter of the time, so who cares what he thinks?

**money** · Posted On: 8/25/2011 6:47pm

You should be more careful. Also, this thread is worthless without pics.

**Permalost** · Posted On: 8/25/2011 6:50pm

My dad used to install carpet, and when I was a kid I saw him come home with all kind of Macguyver'd solutions to cuts. It's the razorbladinest job I've seen. One day there was a piece of carpet insulation wrapped in duct tape around his arm.