How I Almost Lost A Finger, or You Want Me to What? On the What What?

As I sit and smell the cheesy, garlic-y, deliciousness of whatever it is that the man behind me is annoyingly eating while waiting for the plane, I am finally feeling ready to tell the story of what happened to me on Friday.

(Deep breath inserted….here) I nearly lost a finger.

Seriously.

The middle one on my right hand. My absolute favorite finger. Of all time.

Here’s how: I was preparing my classroom for summer checkout. Which means stacking desks (students did it), stacking chairs (students did it), cleaning up last minute things (we all did it) and the like.

At two o’clock. As I am ready to get the custodian to check me out, he enters my room. With the co-custodian.

Oh, people. Have you cried in front of co-workers that you don’t even barely know?

As I bounce over to him and announce that he must have psychic abilities and I was just about to get him, he looks at my windows and tells me ALL tape must be removed (which I didn’t put up, the girl that had my room before did) and all staples must be removed from the bulletin board AND all the desks that were stacked up where I’ve stacked them for the last three years? Those had to be moved.

Tears pooled in my eyes. I kid you not. And then he hands me (wait for it, wait for it)…a razor. Just the razor. No gloves, no handle, no nothing. Just a tiny teeny weenie blade.

I should interrupt myself to explain to you that my experience with razors is limited to legs and pits. Sometimes when I’m tired I don’t even trust myself with the razor to shave.

And here I was. Alone with a razor blade. After I swore A LOT, I began to scrape away the old, yellowed tape. Scrape, scrape, and then I hit bone. Or nail. Or something. And then I yelled (not muttered) SON OF A BITCH, which got the religious male teacher from next door racing over.

Apparently he heard some yelling.

He forgave the swearing and asked if I was okay. I will tell you something. This man next door? He is big. And I feel safe because he comes to my fake rescue all the time. I am a loud teacher.

So anyway, I wave my middle finger at him and tell him that no, I'm not okay, I've been stabbed - by myself. Blood dripping down my finger and hand.

It went downhill after that. I filled out an at-work incident report, just in case I got an infection and my finger fell off. I wanted to be covered, you know? The sad thing was, I didn't get the response I wanted. It was drama and I wanted someone to go, "Awe, are you okay?" Because really? I didn't want to scrape all that stuff anyway. Or do my bulletin boards. Or move my chairs (again). So I did it and was almost de-fingered in the process. And while people showed concern, it wasn't the response I was looking for, you know?

The custodian comes back to check out my room so I can leave. Tape still on the windows. He asks me for the razor and I tell him that I had to throw it out as it was covered with my blood and part of my finger. He was all, "Oh, okay" and just gets out another one. No biggie.

So. sad. all. day.

I get home and I show Jeremiah. First response? "Awe, man! You hurt your middle finger? That's your favorite!" and a lot of how dare they make me do those things. Don't I have the best boyfriend ever?