Why don't you, sit right back, and I, I may tell you, a Tale (/greenjelly)
January 22nd, 2016
So in the past I have mentioned my friend, Chris, and just yesterday I mentioned the whole deal with him almost chopping off my finger. It was a rather silly incident overall, but as I brought it up, I suppose I should explain what the deal was regarding that incident. You see, back in the day, musical media used to come in really, really large plastic packages. I'm talking gigantic.
Say you bought a compact disc. A compact disc, kids, are optical discs just shy of five inches in diameter, which are ostensibly fed into compact disc drives that can read whatever was imprinted on them. These discs can be used to store computer data, as you may know from some older video game you physically purchased in the past, but they could also hold up to seventy four (!) minutes of audio.
I know that sounds archaic to you kids with your streaming musics and libraries of every song ever made in mp3 file formats, but there you go. Luckily for you lot, you were born in the digital age, with your Internets and easily accessible media of every type, only a button press away from your transient enjoyment. Back in the day, however, dinosaurs like me had to actually go to a music store to get music.
On one such trip, I had picked up some disc or another, I really can't recall what it was, but this was a long time ago. That means it was probably some sort of Metallica album. This is because I was in my early teens at this point in time, and some of my favorite, angry musicians hadn't banded together yet. Oh sure, Pantera was around in this era, but their music wasn't near what it had eventually evolved into.
Think 'Winger' and you're halfway there.
Anyway. So I had purchased this disc, and was trying to release the thing from the prison of its packaging, which at the time consisted of a plastic cage that was about a foot long and six inches thick. There's actually a story that explains why music stores did this horrible thing to its customers, but I really didn't care then, and I still don't care today. It was, in a word, super wasteful.
And super annoying. So these packages, designed to fit in the shelves of stores that were previously dedicated to storing records (look them up, you little whipper snappers), were also built to deter thieves. And as anyone who has ever had to open a product packaged to deter thieves, it is much more effective at deterring people who actually bought the product from using the product.
As my attempts to open the package and get at the delicious music inside failed thus far, I went for drastic measures. Taking a shot at cutting my way into the thing with a rather large kitchen knife, what with a sledge hammer being unavailable at the time, I began to make headway in carving into the unnecessarily hard plastic. At which point Chris said he wanted to look at that knife.
Not thinking anything of it, I handed the implement to him, handle first, because you never give someone the edge of a knife. I did this assuming Chris would lift the knife out of my hand, but no, he pulled it straight back, at which point it cut my index finger down to the bone. Hilarity then ensued as, in sudden abject pain, I shook my hand and sprayed blood all over every white surface nearby.
Walls, ceilings, carpet, Chris. Nothing was safe!
Upon hearing the commotion, my mom ran out and inspected the damage, realizing that this was more than my usual self-inflicted injury. In the event that you weren't sure, I am incredibly clumsy, and often did stupid things to myself that resulted in an 'Ow!', 'Argh!', or 'Aieee!' filling the house. But this bumble? Well, this one required immediate medical attention, as luck would have it.
As a result of this, I was carted off to a nearby hospital, over in distressingly corrupt Sarpy county, where a doctor proceeded to stitch the virtually bisected digit back together. Watching this in abject pain, what with this unsympathetic surgeon repeatedly stabbing my already slashed up finger with a needle as he reconnected the sundered tissue, I may have said many four letter words. If not all of them.
Naturally, I was annoyed with Chris about this, and have taken every opportunity to remind him of the suffering my hand endured at his hands ever since - although he denies any culpability. That rapscallion. Not that he's too bothered about this, because having grown up together in the same suburban neighborhood, the two of us have inflicted more than our fair share of pain and misery on each other over the years.
As a weird aside, for years I had no sensation in the tip of my right index finger, which comes in handy when you burn yourself regularly with a soldering iron, or snag it on clipped component leads often. Sadly, however, this weird deficit has corrected itself somewhat recently, as I learned the hard way when I burned myself real good on a hot pan a few months ago. Talk about an unpleasant surprise.
Anyhow, my various distractions notwithstanding, you now know... the rest of the story.