One of my favorite things to do first thing in the morning is to open Facebook and look over my memories. It’s a nice way to remember all of the wacky shenanigans I’ve gotten into over the years.
On Wednesday, I was reminded that it was the tenth anniversary of the most epic Thanksgiving I’ve ever had: the time I mistook my finger for a potato. I reread the story and the Facebook posts. I cringed a bit when I looked at the photos. Overall, though, it gave me a good laugh. I don’t do as much cooking at Thanksgiving since Jeff and I got together. Usually, when we go to his family’s house, his mom does the cooking. When we stay home, Jeff does most of the cooking – I am responsible only for sweet potatoes and pies (the good stuff). As a result, the odds of Thanksgiving disasters are quite low.
Of course, this was Thanksgiving eve, and I offered to make dinner. It was the perfect time for Murphy’s law to enter into my life and turn our kitchen into a bloodbath.
So, as I said, I offered to cook dinner. Nothing fancy, just a vegetable soup. But before starting to cut the vegetables, I told Jeff I was a little nervous because I was using the fancy knife set we got for our wedding, which is very, very, very sharp. Actually, I need to add like six more verys to that sentence. I cut myself last week – nothing serious, just nicked my index finger one night – so I knew what I was talking about.
But I wasn’t going to let a little fear hold me back. I grabbed the onion, sliced it in half and prepared to dice it. I thought I’d use a trick I’ve seen countless TV chefs use, where they slice the onion in half horizontally to dice the onion. And that’s when things went wrong.
I laid my hand flat on top of the onion and started to slice it, but the knife got stuck. And I’m sure you know where this is going. Smart Mindy would have stopped there. But I was not Smart Mindy. I was Idiot Mindy and I just kept trying to shove that knife through that onion. And as a result, I shoved that knife right through my palm.
As is standard anytime I hurt myself, I started saying, “Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap….”
Jeff responded immediately. “What’s wrong?” he asked coming into the kitchen.
“I cut myself,” I said, turning to the sink to rinse out my furiously bleeding wound. “Pretty badly.”
“Do you need stitches?”
Having assessed the wound before I shoved my hand under the sink, I knew that, while being quite a big gash, it was not super deep. Stitches wouldn’t help. “No.”
So, Jeff ran and got me a towel to hold against my hand. He also raided the closet where I keep my bandaids (I say mine because I’m the person who uses them regularly), grabbing gauze and extra large bandaids, as well as Neosporin. Then, he helped me wrap up my hand. But it was then that I learned something very important about my husband that I had never before experienced in our eight years together: Jeff does not do well with blood. Especially when it’s gushing out of a one-inch by half-inch slash across his wife’s palm. But he helped me, and that’s what matters. I love him so much for that.
With that, my time in the kitchen came to a close. Jeff banished me to the living room so he could finish making dinner without any further bloodshed. And as I walked away he said something very important: “Maybe you shouldn’t cook on this date anymore.”
Maybe I shouldn’t.
Mindy Kinnaman 