Playing Fair and Being Kind

AN AGGRAVATION

 A slow day at The Castle. I stayed up way too late last night. I was on-line reading references, poetry, and I watched two or three Netflix T.V. shows. I made it to bed around 1:30 A.M. I was exhausted from being up so late. Not a good habit to get into. My body was beginning to revolt by caving in with aches and pains not normally experienced. I was yawning continually and my eyes were stinging from dryness. I knew better but the addictive portion of my personality didn’t want to give in. Bad news.

Sooo… here I am, moving slowly and waiting out the day until my first scheduled doctor’s appointment this afternoon. I go to see the pulmonologist at 3 P.M. in Brunswick, Mid-Coast Hospital. I’m probably going to come back with a C-pap machine. Maybe. Anyway, I’m in The Castle killing time, watching a little T.V.

Earlier I built a fire in the woodstove. In the process I cut my right middle finger open while breaking up some kindling. I was tearing red oak apart without using my work gloves. Just to let you know, oak is a very hard and heavy wood. I’ve often wondered if a shiv could be fashioned from an oak stick. I’m certain that the finished product would be sharp and dangerous. I knew better than to try to man-handle the oak. I broke a stick and part of it tore the layers of skin from my middle finger leaving a flap past which the blood flowed unimpeded.

I went into high-order response. First thing I did was to fill the house with “holy-shit”s and “goddammit”s. Then I pressed the ring and index fingers tight against the middle one to stem the bleeding while I skipped, danced, pirouetted, and artistically threw in a lateral arabesque on the way to the bathroom sink. Of course, my brain was, all this time, imagining the extent of the damage. I had enough time, before reaching The Castle emergency room, to plan a bandage-one-hand-with-the-other complex procedure. My past experience as a U. S. Navy Quality Assurance Officer for Repairing Deep Diving Nuclear Submarines was not going to play any part in this event. My only go-to card was my history of wounding myself over 80 years. I assured myself that, “I got this!”

Three band-aids later I was re-tracing my steps, dance moves and all, in an informal debrief of sorts. There was much to be grateful for but not a lot to be proud of. I was grateful that no one heard my screams from the road. I was relieved that I only tore apart three band-aids. The worst part was clearing the air of blue haze from all the lovely cuss words I’d expended. It’ll take a while to get all of it out of The Castle.

G. M. Goodwin
15 January 2019