I have it in my archives somewhere—a record of my stupidity, written December 17th, 2000:

I look like I tried to commit suicide by cat.

I spent all day Thursday putting together my desk (with return) using my own two hands. I’ve assembled office furniture before, but I don’t do it daily; I had to use muscles I’d forgotten I had. It took a while for it all to catch up to me, but catch up to me it did. Then I made the mistake of trying to pick up my cat.

Pardon my stupidity, but I was dead tired and sore; I took my own sweet time lifting my cat close to me, and sometime within those precious 5 seconds, she decided to get spooked by some imagined sound and leap away, using the palms of my hands as launching pads for her powerful back legs.

Yowza.

It’s amazing how deep a cat’s claws can dig through flesh. Within moments I was staring dumfoundedly at loose flaps of skin and rivers of blood. I screwed up my face, the way a child does right before a tantrum or a session of unrestrained bawling, and I presented my hands to the only person I could count on to be completely unsqueamish and professional about the whole thing.

“Don’t you dare go native on me,” he said when my lip trembled. He made me wash my hands thoroughly before he blathered on all kinds of first aid goo over the cuts. I kept bleeding, but he was relentless. Hours later, after all the washing, blathering, waiting, and washing again, he finally bandaged my stinging wounds and sent me off to bed.

The cuts still sting, but they’re also itchy — which tells me that they’re at least starting to heal.

Yep. That scar is still there—a barely discernable thin white line on the left hand’s mound of Venus. Or, at least I think that’s what palm readers call it. It’s the heel of the hand where the thumb sprouts. Not that my thumbs resemble sprouts or that my hands resemble mounds of Venus.

Oh, jeez. I should just stop while I’m ahead.

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