How many ‘I am such an idiot’ moments have you had in your life? If you say anything in the single digits, you’re probably not out of your twenties yet. Mine span the decades of my life all the way back to when I was eight years old. Two friends, my sister, and I all climbed into what we thought was our friends’ mom’s station wagon at Pizza Hut. Spoiler alert—it wasn’t. In fact, the mom hadn’t even owned a station wagon in a solid three years.
Then there was the time in high school chemistry when I decided that a tiny piece of metal—which had been molten just moments earlier—was fine to pick up with my bare fingers. That one still haunts me to this day. Not because of any scar or the pain but because I was sixteen, and everything is embarrassing when you’re sixteen.
So what, you may ask, prompted this little jaunt down memory lane? Well, I had one of these moments a few minutes ago. First off, I need to lay some groundwork. I am, for all intents and purposes, an intelligent woman. I graduated in the top five percent of my high school class, hold two separate college degrees, and have even figured out how to work the weed eater without my husband’s help. But today, I sunk below it all by cutting my thumb. It’s not so much that I cut my thumb so much as how I did it.
As most of you know, I am thoroughly dependent on coffee. Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually. It’s basically a part of my personality at this point in my life. So when a new box showed up on my front porch, I cut that sucker open with gusto. And forgot one very simple rule that my mother, my preschool teacher, and probably even my overbearing sister taught me at the young age of three. Don’t cut toward yourself.
It’s a simple enough instruction that my forty-year-old self chose to flick out of my brain in an attempt to get into those fresh grounds as quickly as possible. Don’t judge me. Or judge me, just not for this.
So with a knife that is sharp enough to cut through tape, cardboard, and probably a small tree if I had enough determination, I began slashing away. Much to my thumb’s dismay.
Rest assured, it wasn’t deep enough to require stitches, but the nail is a bit worse for wear. Once it grows out a bit, I’ll be good as new.
So, the next time you have an ‘I am such an idiot’ moment, rest easy in the knowledge that it wasn’t your first and assuredly won’t be your last.