Friday Bloody Friday

It could have been worse. It was only a flesh wound, as they say, but my flesh. That knife. This blood. I’d know it anywhere. The point of a sharp knife went into my toe. If this were a circumcision I’d missed badly. Which toe? I’m not sure there was so much blood. Pools of it. The floor was a regular crime scene. I must have hit a gusher. The knife had fallen from the rack of silverware while I was emptying the dishwasher last night. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Let this be a lesson to all of you. Never walk barefoot in your own house. In someone else’s house it’s fine.  If something happened away from home you could always sue and settle out of court.

It was bleeding so much Peggy and I couldn’t tell where the point of entry was; either the little toe or the one next to it or in the space between or on top of them. So we finally staunched the flow. I’ve always wanted to use that word, staunched, as in the financial crisis when taxpayer money staunched the hemorrhaging of the big banks. Maybe we should have called Alan Greenspan or Timothy Geithner but they were probably busy staunching each other. Besides, I knew I wasn’t big enough to not fail.

Not knowing the origin of the wound all we could do was wrap a 4 X 4 gauze pad around the two toes very tightly. Under that I have 6 butterfly Band-Aids. I felt as if I’d been fracked. I had tapped into a long-dormant arterial flow and messed up the entire environment in its wake.

There’s something about blood. It’s so red. So healthy looking. And so scary when it is uncontained. The ancient code allows for trading eyes and teeth but no mention of toes. What have I done wrong? Never mind, I withdraw the question. I don’t want to be reminded. Maybe this is a stigmata. If so it’s not working. God knows, I remain an unreconstructed heathen.

Could the Old Testament God have gotten loose with another temper tantrum? Listen, Yahweh, I looked for onion egg matzoh in the store yesterday but they were all out. Enough with your bolts of lightning. Relax and have a piece of fruit.

Does everything happen for a purpose? Yes, I think so. And the purpose is to demonstrate that there is no purpose unless you want to make something of it. Random acts of kindness and creativity are matched by random acts of selfishness and destruction. As Tarzan said to Jane while swinging from a tree with a banana in his mouth, It’s a jungle out there. Don’t leave home without a loincloth and wooden shoes wouldn’t hurt either.