All Thumbs

Sometimes I do something so dumb, so stupid, so utterly foolish that it makes me wonder how I manage to dress myself each morning. I'm talking really, really, really dumb stuff like when I caught my hair on fire with a curling iron ... yeah, that was a long, long, long time ago when I had hair. Or when I drove through my garage door twice in the same day. Or when I did a double jump off the diving board with my niece and scraped the whole side of my face on the rough cement bottom of the pool. Or when I unplugged the clothes dryer while I was standing barefoot in water on a concrete floor ... that may qualify as the absolute dumbest thing I've ever done now that I think about it. Or what I did on Wednesday morning as I was getting my things out of my car at the office.

It was breezy that morning when I climbed out of the car ... breezy enough that the wind slammed my car door shut without any help from me. I was a few minutes late for work, and I didn't put my backpack all the way on both shoulders, and I had my lunchbox teetering by its strap on the same shoulder as well. I had my Camelbak bottle in one hand and my phone in the other as I reached into the passenger side seat to grab the work I had brought home the night before. And that's when it happened ... the wind again caught the car door, and just as it was about to smash me in the head, I leaned back just enough that it missed my head. For a split second, I thought to myself, "Man, that was a close call." No sooner than the thought had formed in my mind, I felt it ... deep, piercing pain ... in my left thumb. Yep, I avoided a smashing to my head from the renegade car door, but I didn't, however, think to remove my hand from the door's path before it slammed squarely on my thumb and left me with a gash across my knuckle.

I really do have a pretty high pain tolerance, which my doctor would readily tell you ... hence the reason that often by the time I finally go to her office with an earache, my eardrum is close to bursting. If I only had a nickel for every time she has said to me over the last 10 plus years, "How in the world can you not be writhing in pain? That has to hurt like crazy!" So when I tell you that the pain in my thumb was so intense that it brought tears to my eyes and I was instantly nauseated, you can bet that my flipping thumb hurt like the devil. By the time I got to my desk, I was bleeding and thought I was going to pass out. After a couple of the gals who sit near me inspected the cut (including making me bend my thumb ... yep, that felt real good for sure), I went to the kitchen to rinse my wound and tried not to throw up my breakfast while one of my cubemates applied antibiotic gel on the cut and wrapped my thumb in a bandaid.

Though my pain tolerance is high, I'm a true baby when it comes to any type of skin laceration. Translated that means that when I have an ouchie or a boo-boo, I want a cool bandaid and not the old standard plain beige run-of-the-mill ones. My favorites are Ninja Turtles, but I had to settle for a couple of Muppets bandages that one of my co-workers had at her desk until I could go to Walmart over my lunch hour. And tonight, as I sit here typing, my still bleeding and aching thumb is lovingly covered by Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy and Woodstock ... don't even say it ... everyone knows that ouchies and boo-boos heal better when they are lovingly wrapped in a superhero, fighting and talking turtle or famous comic strip character bandaid.

If you've read this blog even a couple of times, you know that I'm always looking for the lessons I'm supposed to learn from both the big and little events of life. I've had two days to try and figure out what possible lesson could come from my wounded thumb, and I think I've come up with a couple for you to ponder along with me. It's really, really important not to let my head get slammed in the car door ... that could do some significant damage to my brain. But at around 8:40 a.m. Wednesday morning, it suddenly became unbelievably important for me to protect my thumb as well. See, here's the thing ... it's not only the big things in life I need to protect and cherish and hold dear, it's the little things, too. Little things like thumbs can mean a whole, whole, whole lot, friends ... they surely can.