NO SHARP OBJECTS

David Wright

I am a pacifist for a lot of reasons, some laudable and some pathetic. Tonight I reminded myself of one of the most pathetic: I cannot be trusted with sharp objects, even around myself. If I cause this much damage by accident, there’s no telling what I would do if I ever tried to do bodily harm to another. When the minor bleeding stops, this is the story as I hope it is told, not as my wife will probably tell it years from now.

I was hanging a blind on the window in our living room, a task I should’ve gotten to months ago. I’ve already put up a lot of these in our house, so I kind of have a system that works, meaning I don’t have to think too deeply about the process. One step is using scissors to cut a thick plastic strip that holds the slats in a bunch.

I couldn’t find the scissors, so I was using a knife, a fairly dull kitchen knife (turn away now if you see where this is headed and recognize squeamishness in your heart). Sawing away at the plastic got me nowhere, so I pulled hard, very hard at the plastic strip just above my forehead. I got it, yep, sure did. Plastic strip popped in half, and the point of the knife caught me right on the hairline.

Now, a scalp wound doesn’t have to be very deep to bleed a great deal (this my wife will tell me later). However, at the moment the blood began to cascade down my face and onto my hands (and the floor and the carpet on the stairs), it seemed like a fairly serious wound. I hollered up the stairs to my wife, who was trying to get the children asleep: "Honey, I just stabbed myself in the head."

This caused undue alarm, especially on the part of my 11-year-old daughter. My two-year-old son, in the habit of repeating most of what he hears, says, "Honey, Daddy stabbed himself in the head." I bled most of the way up the stairs, into the kids’ bathroom, and all over my feet (I was wearing sandals).

Direct pressure stopped the bleeding, a fairly superficial scalp wound. Spray & Wash took most of the blood stains out of the carpet.

On the other hand, my daughter can’t rid herself of the images of her daddy staggering into the bathroom with blood on his hands. My son thinks all of this is just something that happens. My wife, after gently and firmly treating the wound in her best doctor way, reminds me that I’m a "lousy patient" and wonders why I could not simply stay put rather than bleeding all over the house.

I, of course, knowing my history of self-inflicted injuries, am just really grateful to have only a story to tell. And I still have to finish installing the blinds. It makes me want to punch something. Or lie down. Has anyone seen the scissors?

—David Wright and his family live in central Illinois. He teaches writing and literature at Wheaton College and is author of several poetry collections, including A Liturgy for Stones (DreamSeeker Books, 2003).