How Not to Cut an Avocado

As I held my (very sharp) chef's knife over the pit of a halved avocado, the silky green flesh winking up at me, I had a thought: You know, one of these days I'm probably going to cut myself as I whack a knife into the pit to remove it.
I can't remember whether I physically shrugged that little pearl of wisdom off, but I know I did a mental shrug and a wink to boot. Nah, I'm not going to cut myself. How silly is that.
Then, with a wickedly sharp swish, I dropped the knife and a jolt of pain spun through my body.
Here are three things you should know right now:
1. Clint is very keen on keeping our knives sharpened.
2. I was holding the avocado in the stupidest possible fashion--cupping it as I should have been--but with my thumb sticking up at least an inch above the edge of the avocado.
3. I have awful aim.
I must have cried out. I'm pretty sure I tossed the knife across the counter (thankfully injuring nothing else). And I looked down at the rush of blood--far too red, far too bright--welling from the cut in my thumb.
I dashed to the sink, turning on the water, squeezing my thumb and watching my blood drip down the drain. That's when Clint and the kids rushed into the kitchen. Now, if you don't know Clint well, you need to know this: he is a man who knows about bodily injury. He once got a fish hook stuck in his back while cleaning the shed--and he tried to make me remove it  by pushing it the rest of the way through. He almost chainsawed his leg off and then walked up to the house holding his leg together to calmly ask for a ride to the hospital. His hands have had many intimate encounters with power tools, and once, as the doctor was stitching him up, he said, "Huh, I've never seen anyone with skin this tough on his hands. The needle (tug tug) doesn't even want (tug tug) to go through it at all." And Clint just sat there. I am not saying my husband is clumsy or foolhardy! No, when a guy works with dangerous tools as often as my husband does, the likelihood of injurious encounters grows exponentially.
So, back to me: as I wailed at the blood flowing into the sink, he took charge of the situation. He stood beside me and bent over the wound. "Let me see how deep it is," he said. He pulled the edges of the cut apart gently, and that is when I remembered that I had felt something Very Wrong when the knife hit my thumb. As in, I thought that maybe the blade hit my bone. Suddenly, I could feel my heart battering against my ribs and tingles shot up and down my skin.
"I think I'm going to pass out," I breathed.
"What?" he asked, still staring down at the skin he was pulling apart. "You only lost a tiny bit of blood."
"No," I said. "I feel sick. I think I'm going to..." And then the tingling got worse and my scalp started to buzz. I was going down.
So, like any veteran fainter, I did the smart thing. I crouched down beside the sink, getting as close to a prone position as I could, while Clint continued to fiddle around with my thumb. I'm pretty sure he just sighed at me at this point.
That's when Jonah showed up with the bandaging stuff. Clint wrapped my thumb in several layers of intricate bandages and then released me.
I sat on the floor, holding my injured hand to my heart. I could feel it throbbing in a separate rhythm of agony, but I didn't dare to look at it for a long time. When I finally did, I saw that my bright blood had already stained the bandage. "Don't you think I need stitches?" I asked, my voice charmingly tremulous.
"You're fine," he said. "It's not really that bad."
Not that bad! It was awful! I almost fainted. He has no sympathy.
I had to lie down on the couch while Clint and the kids finished making dinner, and afterward, they pressed me back toward the couch to lie down while they cleaned up. I felt faint for the rest of the evening, suffering from heart palpitations and flashbacks of that awful knife descending toward my innocent thumb. (Oh, and I also hosted the first meeting of the Boozy Girls' Craft Night, which was going to be a blog post but I'm not even really sure what happened once everyone showed up. That's what ibuprofen + wine can do.)
The next evening, Jared wandered into the kitchen as I was chopping carrots for dinner. "You should be careful with that knife, Mom," he said. "You might cut yourself again."
Yeah. Thanks, smartie. Momma already thought about that.