One Good Foot, One Sweaty Foot

I once returned from school to find the Protagitron frozen in our kitchen, standing in a lake of red oozing in all directions. It had turned out that she had dropped a bottle of some sort of red sauce which had broken. The shards of glass had then sliced open her toe, and the sticky crimson lake was a horrifying mixture of condiment and human blood.

Practical, and with General Tao Chicken in mind, this small setback did not hinder the Protagitron's progress. She cleaned up the mess and bandaged her foot. As it was, however, the toe wound was quite deep and continued to bleed for quite a while. Rather than visit an emergency room to see if she needed stitches*, Protagitron wrapped her foot in many bandages, put it in a plastic baggie, propped it up on a chair, and enjoyed her Chinese food delicacy of a dinner.

I bring this story up, and hope the Protagitron does not mind me telling it as imitation is a form of flattery, because I now have a plastic bag on my foot. After a delightful bath in my relatively clean tub in my somewhat tidy bathroom, I could not stop the bleeding from a shaving wound. If you are a person who shaves their legs, you know how these wounds can be. They are small, but gush blood in an endless stream. After bleeding on my towel, in the tub, on the bathmat, the kitchen floor, and in the sink as I tried to wipe up the blood and apply bandages, it became clear that my efforts were futile, much like resistance to the Borg might be.

Taking inspiration from one of my favorite women of all time, I did what I could with a band-aid, then put my foot in a quart sized bag, sealed it around my ankle, and called it a night. It is better my foot sweat a bit and the inside of a plastic bag get blood-stained than I bleed all over my couch.



*And who could blame her? I once walked in and right back out of an emergency room in Quebec. Also, I watched the film Jesus de Montreal. I know that visiting a hospital, especially the urgent care part, is a surefire way to die a slow, agonizing, death due to incompetent and negligent care and understaffed healthcare facilities.