When a neighbor comes over and brings you a lovely bouquet of clippings from her garden:
- Thank her and make a big fuss over how beautiful the flowers are and how lovely they smell, and how you just adore fresh flowers.
- Mean it.
- Go get a vase, quickly, so that the flowers are in water as soon as possible because you don't want the stems to dry out.
- When choosing the vase, be sure to pick the fat, unwieldy one.
- When placing the vase on the counter, try to set it down at just the right angle, and with just the right level of force.
- Watch it shatter in your hand.
- Feel the largest piece slice your thumb. Assume the wound is not that severe since it didn't hurt that much, really.
- Curse like a longshoreman.
- Following first aid protocol, hold pressure on wound for 15 minutes so it can stop bleeding.
- Repeat, because you must have done it wrong.
- Reassure your neighbor, who is blanching visibly.
- Make a joke about how accident prone you are.
- With your good hand, pour your neighbor a cup of fresh coffee, which you carry from the kitchen to the living room with milk and sugar bowls on the toaster-oven tray because you have no tea tray.
- Make a joke about your hostessing skills.
- Chat as if you aren't concerned about your still-bleeding hand.
- Excuse yourself 'for just a moment' because you're not sure you turned off the coffee pot.
- Neglect to mention that the coffee pot turns itself on and off, and might someday knit you a cardigan if you can figure out the code.
- Make small talk nonchalantly from the kitchen while you surreptitiously apply butterfly sutures (one-handed! ^4!) to the gash in the digit that -- along with philosophy and art -- separates you from the majority of other wildlife.
- Realize that your grasp of philosophy is unimpressive, you couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler, and there are a few apes who have twice as many opposable thumbs as you used to have.
- Consider adding whiskey to your own coffee. Refrain. You may be a dolt who is outranked on the evolutionary scale by some poop-throwers, but you're the only person you know in this city whom you can trust to drive you to the ER if you feel faint from the loss of blood.
- Ask yourself how the hell you ever got into graduate school with your sad-ass logical skills.
- Decide to pour whiskey into cup after all.
- Realize that the stench of whiskey is unmaskable with even the strongest roast of coffee.
- Pour whiskey out of cup. Rinse.
- Deposit still-stinky cup in sink, start over with clean coffee cup.
- Hear neighbor heading for the kitchen to check on you. You can't let her find you in here bleeding all over the butcher block in a kitchen that smells like whiskey when you didn't even get to drink the stinking whiskey. Emergency!!
- Pop your smiling face out of kitchen.
- Distract her with gossip about the neighbor whose house is visible from the window furthest from your kitchen.
- Sigh in relief as she moves to that window to contemplate the news and their house.
- Wrap 2x2 gauze around your thumb.
- Wrap clear packing tape around your 2x2 gauze very tightly so you can drink your damned virgin coffee without having to continue holding pressure on your thumb.
- Wrap 4x4 neatly around this, and with appropriate tape.
- Discuss local arts offerings for the summer.
- Pretend you're excited to see a community theater version of a play you hated when you saw professionals do it.
- Feel throbbing pain, and strong desire to reprise your earlier role as longshoreman #1.
- Encourage neighbor to go home by subtle shift to the annoyingly didactic.
- Act disappointed that she needed to leave so quickly, but do that while walking to the door.
- Walk her out, and thank her again for the lovely flowers.
- Vodka, neat.
- Proceed to local walk-in medical office.
