Yesterday I sliced a piece of my pinky finger off. With a scissor.
I don’t even want to discuss the HOW’S and WHY’S. Just know this? It was an accident. And it prompted a visit to the ER and stitches.
A year ago and the VERY same date, I sliced my other pinky open. I won’t tell you the horror of those detail either. But it didn’t involve scissors. Just know I can not wait to actually wash dishes with a dish washer machine so that a repeat incident won’t ever happen again.
ONE YEAR TO THE DAY, folks. How funny is that? Same ER doctor. Same admissions people. Same everything. Same embarrassment. Same walk home in the rain. Same stinging pain and self notification that nothing like this shall ever happen again (something so miniscule creating such a buzz is just not fun.)
When I was ten years old I slammed my elbow through a glass window. I was not escaping any sort of curfew or breaking the glass for a fire extinguisher. I was sitting next to the window, saw a spider, and panicked. My arm flailed out and went right through the pane. Pun intended. It hurt like hell.
For days and years following, my sweet Uncle Ken dubbed me, “Pointy Elbows.” That was my nickname then and twenty plus years later, it remains. Now, one may reason ALL people have pointy elbows but for a sensitive and shiny-faced kid, the name sucked and was a reminder of an embarrassing incident that may I add, happened the evening of the sixth grade school dance. And yes, yours truly couldn’t attend. Her mother called some of her friends and explained her necessary absence. It was the one event of the year I felt butterflies for. I REALLY wanted to go. Like, really.
So yesterday, I thought about my pointy elbows and that pane of glass and how some things have never changed over the years. I get embarrassed quite easily over my spastic shortcomings. I do laugh it off but I do wish I had more grace.
My father was an amputee so a few bumps and bruises and stitches are meaningless to me. Just time suckers. I have, afterall, a healthy body and all of my fingers and toes. We should all be so lucky.
But as I was saying, some things just never change. And so when I heard it was exactly one year ago that I stepped through those doors of the ER and nodded to a bored, security guard with a blood soaked, paper towel wrapped around my hand, I thought, “Of course. Of course Miss Pointy Elbow has returned. Of course.”
And as I waited to be seen with my legs crossed and my hair, messy from the wind and rain, I smirked to myself.
Because truly, what we bring to the table from our childhood makes us more resilient from that said wind and rain.
