I cut my finger open with my new pocketknife. I thought I should just cut to the chase because to know me is to know I’m going to shred my fingers with sharp things as soon as you give them to me. I’d like to tell you it wasn’t my fault but it totally was.
See, I was talking to Pee-tah who had just picked me up after I dropped off my car for the fourth high-dollar fix of 2014 (it was the bushings this time, most likely exacerbated by the rear-ending my car took from the guy with the cigarette), and I was opening some batteries with my knife. I was doing great with that until I flipped the knife around and the hinge snapped shut like it is designed to do when pressed upon. The problem was that the blade closed onto my finger and immediately made the blood gush from it. (Now is probably too late to tell you “TMI.”)
Pee-tah didn’t even bat an eye. He just sighed a little bit and clicked on his blinker for the turn lane into Walgreens. “We’ll get some band aids,” he said.
We split up as we walked into the store, me to the front to find more batteries and Pee-tah to the back to pick up the bandages. I made my selections and laid the batteries on the counter. There I chatted with the clerks as I held my finger aloft in an attempt to not bleed to death at the Walgreens counter.
The nice lady clerk said, “Hon, you want a paper towel for that?” She was eyeing my gruesome looking finger, hand and arm. No worries about my blood being too thick or anything. Runs like a fountain.
“Sure,” I said, and then wrapped the paper towel wad around my finger and resumed standing like the Statue of Liberty while I waited for Pee-tah and the band aids.
The clerks and I chatted about pocketknives and Rock Island and my need for 6 C-sized batteries (for the blower thing to inflate my float for my Rock Island trip) and waited for Pee-tah. And then we discussed chocolate and chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate marshmallows, debating the merits of each and agreeing that chocolate consumption covers a multitude of ills, up to and including gashed open fingers. After some time I began to wonder if Pee-tah was alright back there in the band aid section. It did not occur to me that he might have become exasperated with my propensity to hurt myself on a regular basis and snuck out the front door as I held my finger like a torch whilst waxing poetic about Cadbury Easter eggs, although it should have. How many times can you roll your eyes and pat me on the arm and shake your head when I flay my skin open without saying, “For the love of God, Jimmie, will you quit with the pocketknife already?”
Instead, I wandered to the back of the store, finger held in front of me, and found Pee-tah holding an armful of bandages. “Jimmie! These are on sale,” he yelped. Y’all, he had so many boxes of bandages that he had to stack them up and hold them like bricks in a wall formation, one arm underneath them and one arm over them, all perpendicular to the floor. He had at least 10 boxes of band aids and chattered excitedly about them as we walked up to the checkout counter. “These are the best bandages ever! They are water resistant and will protect your finger from the gross water you’ll be swimming in later. I know they don’t smell like the other ones but you’ll thank me, you really will.”
Those clerks watched our arrival, Pee-tah with the entire shelf contents of band aids and me with a bloody mess of paper towels wrapped around my finger held above my head. Their eyes got round and their eyebrows leaped up to their hairlines as they asked, “How often exactly do you cut yourself?”
It’s a fair question.
However, what they didn’t know is that Pee-tah is a sucker for a sale. He knows a bargain when he sees one and thus is the reason I own an iPad mini, emergency lights and now the best box of band aids ever, all of which I have already used. Having been my friend for a long, long time, he knows that having a stockpile of band aids is never a bad thing as is having a set of emergency lights and a fire extinguisher, my other favorite gift from Pee-tah.
Also, I’m asking Daddy-O for a hand mixer for my birthday this year because I broke my old one making a banana cake for Hulk. No way I can go wrong with that.
Bag o’ bandages
Love, Jimmie 