Chopping Off My Finger

Once or twice a year, while preparing dinner, I chop off a finger. Okay, I don’t chop off the whole finger, just the tip. Not the whole tip (though that has been done), but I do slice through enough of the finger (or thumb) to produce gushing blood and shouts of horror. Part of this is usually due to dull knives. But much is no doubt due to a reckless confidence enhanced by a few too many pre-dinner beers. And then there’s the Food Channel. I don’t watch as much as I used to, but from watching more than I should I have picked up the notion that good cooks are able to fly through a couple of green peppers and an onion with their knives flashing, cutting boards slapping, hands intact.

But my concern is not my ineptitude at chopping vegetables. That’s something I’ve learned to live (if somewhat tenuously) with. What I don’t understand is why they can’t make bandaids that can cover and secure wounds at the end of one’s digits. It’s an awkward part of the body, to be sure, but then what part of the body isn’t? I go to the drugstore and there are shelves of bandaids of all different kinds, fabrics, textures, colors, shapes, and sizes. But there are none that really work well, particularly at the end of one’s hands. Bandaids are flat, mostly rectangular, and despite what it says on the box, not all that flexible. The end of the finger is tubular, curved, and bends in at least two or three ways. Well, at least it does before it’s been sliced through by a 12” chef’s knife.