The Curse of Klutz

It wasn’t late, about 7 o’clock, but the weak winter sun was long set. My mom turned off the ignition, having just pulled the car up to the small island of gas pumps in the crumbling parking lot of the gas station near our house. I hopped out of the back seat of the car, sensing my mom’s impatience as she walked around the car towards me with quick strides. I wasn’t sure why she was in a rush, but I have always enjoyed being helpful, so I turned to shut the car door behind me (a new habit at 7). Unfortunately, I did this just as my mom closed the gap between us and pushed the door shut from behind me. I heard her sharp intake of breath, and then she screamed.

For a moment I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Then I realized: when I had turned around to shut the car door, my right hand was still partially in the doorframe. My right middle finger had been butting up against the rough metal square that latches the door, and when the door was shut, my finger got pushed in the hole along with the door. My mom opened the door immediately, and I jerked my hand towards me so I could see it under the bright halogen halo provided by the gas pump’s floodlights. I instinctively cupped my left hand under my right, as though catching the rivulets of blood running from my right middle finger would help fix the mishmash that my brain didn’t want to realize used to be the tip of my finger. Besides, it wasn’t cleanly severed, cut off halfway down my fingernail but still hanging by a perilously stretched piece of skin, and I didn’t want my finger to fall on the ground if that thread of skin lost its battle with gravity.

I turned around as the door to the gas station slammed open behind my mother and I. It was a police officer standing almost comically with arms akimbo in the doorway and I saw his mouth drop open as his eyes landed on my bleeding hand. I think when he came running at the sound of my mother’s scream, he wasn’t expecting an injury. I’m sitting in the back seat of the car, holding a small paper bag full of ice with my left hand as I rested my injured finger on top. This was given to me by the officer after he remembered how to close his mouth. A paper bag didn't seem the best choice for all this ice, but he did what he could. In the glow of the roving red and blue lights from our police escort to the hospital my mom’s face in the car’s rearview mirror seemed harder than I’d ever seen it, drawn into taught lines of worry.

I’m lying on my back in the ER, my mom’s face filling my vision. “I’m sorry baby, I’m sorry”. I realize she’s crying as a few of her tears fall onto my cheek and she repeats this line, trying to hold me down like the ER nurse instructed. The doctor and two nurses had my right arm pulled far away from my body as the doctor attempted to stitch the wound and they were trying to keep me from looking so I wouldn’t move and possibly lose my chance at 10 fingertips. The recessed lighting in the ER bothered my eyes. I was suddenly filled with anger, resenting the ER staff for trying to force me to stay still, and I wrenched my head to the right in an effort to break my mom’s grip. I succeeded, and then wished I hadn’t.

It took what felt like a century for my finger to heal. I went around with a little metal support on my finger until then. All the grownups tried to convince me it was a dinosaur and therefor cool, but I was pretty sure they thought it sucked as much as I did. To me, the cool part was that I now had the most unique answer to "tell me a surprising fact about you", a question I was astonished to learn was so common as I got older. I just met these people, and they want a secret? So my answer will forever be: "When I was 7 I got my finger got off. But it's ok, they put it back".