Like A Surgeon

I Guess I Should Cut It Out

I was cutting open a cardboard box with a knife today, and naturally before long there were seven or eight people standing around, watching me do it. After awhile, people got to talking about the worst times they’d ever accidentally cut themselves. There were some pretty good stories, including one where (part of) a digit was lost.

I didn’t have anything that good, but I did have a couple of stories to contribute.

The first one was from about 15 years ago. I was at work, cutting a box like I was today. I broke two cardinal rules of box cutting that day, however. One, my knife blade was really dull, and either I didn’t check it, or I wasn’t concerned enough to replace the blade; and two, I was pulling the knife toward my body as I cut. This is as natural a motion as there is, but every safety film you’ll ever watch on workplace practices will tell you not to do it. Here’s why – the dull blade slipped on the cardboard and I reflexively jerked it violently toward me. I cut myself on the inside of my left wrist, just below the “horn” of the palm. I felt like I had cut pretty deep, and I confirmed this when I looked at the relatively small cut on my wrist and noticed that instead of some red blood trickling out, there was black blood gurgling out.

I am not normally weak-kneed at the sight of blood, even my own; but I will admit in this instance, I was a little bit shock-y there for a moment. My co-workers were freaking out, meantime. One made a tourniquet out of a t-shirt rag, then three or four of them walked me out to the parking lot and threw me into the front seat of someone’s Corolla and took me to the emergency room. By the time we got there I was fine, and I felt a little silly, because there were people in there with real problems. Naturally enough, no one medical looked at me until five or six hours later. Still, I had it pretty good that day. Got off with two stitches and a butterfly bandage and a stern lecture about how to use a box knife from the ER physician, plus I missed almost a full day of work.

My second story went way back, to one of the first real jobs I ever had. I was working in an office and one day our copy machine jammed. I was the only male in the office at the time, so the office manager came to me and asked me to go look at it. I didn’t know the first thing about copiers, but I felt like I had to go look, like my manhood had been challenged or something. So I went into the mail room and walked around the machine for a few moments, in deep thought. Then I figured out I could pull the front off of it, so I did, and tried to look like I knew what in the hell I was doing. I could see a piece of paper, jammed waaay up in there, so I looked around the room for a handy tool. . . and grabbed the first thing I saw - a thin, sharp, 9-inch boning knife that was apparently being used as a letter opener (I was working for a restaurant supply warehouse.) I stabbed that thing around the innards of the copy machine for awhile, trying to free up the jammed paper. At one point the knife slipped and made a nasty gash across the drum of the copier before going straight in to my right upper thigh.

I knew right away the knife had gone all the way to the bone, because I could feel it. I found out later I missed an important artery by about ¾ inch. More importantly, I only missed my right testicle by about 2 inches. As it was, it must have gone through mostly muscle, because there was very little blood. I went into the men’s room to pull down my jeans and check myself, and it was the oddest looking thing. There was a neat, tiny ½ inch incision through my skin, which was still wrapped tight; but a big clump of muscle had popped through the cut in the skin, like a hernia.

I went to the emergency room for that one, too. Pretty much the same story – a quick patch-up job and a lecture from the MD about sharp objects. Missed some work. And that’s it.

At work today, my copy machine story was quite popular. Guys kept asking me to repeat different aspects of it, and they asked a lot of questions. “How sharp was that blade?” “It came how close to your nuts?” This isn’t surprising, really. Men think about their nuts, and what is attached to them, a fair amount of the time. A story like mine is somewhat horrifying to us, but compelling, too. The big joke after I told my story today was that I had once tried to emasculate myself. The rest of the day, anytime anyone saw me in the office, they would say, “Hi, Inca,” in a high-pitched, sing-song, eunuch-like voice. Hilarious. I work with comedians.

For some reason, it all reminded me of an article I once read about a Texas folk artist whose name I cannot recall. The artist was a primitive eccentric, who lived on the Texas Gulf Coast, Port Isabel, Port Lavaca, somewhere like that. He was self-taught, and painted crude and child-like but vivid and strangely compelling watercolors, usually of the ocean. The thing I most remember from the article, though, is that it was discovered that at some point this painter had, well, committed the ultimate act of self-mutilation. He had castrated himself, intentionally - God only knows why. Just took a sharp knife (I hope it was sharp) one day and, whisk, whisk, whisk. "And then he was a she," as Lou Reed once said.

I have always had an affinity for the creative side of life, you know. I might have even fancied myself as being creative. Maybe even thought once or twice I might have some potential as an artist. But then again, maybe not.

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