Tip of my Finger

My apologies for putting The Tip of my Fingers song in your head:

When I was working as an archivist, one of my duties was to cut custom labels for the backup tapes we used. We typically printed out the labels onto a single sheet, then trimmed them to fit with an Exacto blade. Whenever I hold a straightedge, I typically span the edge with my thumb and forefinger of my right hand to hold it steady— then trim with my left.

My forefinger must have shifted enough on the straightedge to cause the tip of my finger to protrude just enough… the next thing I knew my right forefinger hurt and a bead of blood was soon forming. Quickly putting my finger in my mouth so that it didn't bleed all over the table, I picked up the tip and proceeded to look for a bandaid.

I must have looked pretty ridiculous with my finger in my mouth wandering around asking people where I could find a band-aid. Not getting a straight answer, I proceeded to go into the washroom to at least try and clean the wound. I was getting pretty desperate by this time since I could not stop the finger from bleeding and didn't want to use masking tape and toilet paper to cover the wound only to have it bleed all over the place.

I wound up putting my finger under cold water and pressing the tip back on until it stopped bleeding. Worked pretty good too. Then I dabbed the tip of the finger with toilet paper and then wrapped it in tape (I would worry about a proper bandaid later).

Fortunately the only problem I had with the finger was the fact that I was the Choir Director at church and had to use my right hand to conduct with that evening. I don't think that waving a hand around that just had the tip of its forefinger cut off the morning before was not going to throb and hurt— but I worked through the pain and got through the rehearsal without a hitch.

Even though I lost the tip of my finger, I did manage to reattach it and looking at it today you can hardly tell that I cut it off.

---