The Story of the Minor Toe Incident

Today I tripped over an empty cardboard box in the garage and ended up throwing myself into various other items – such as a storage tub and a car. After about a millisecond of pinballing myself around, I walked around like a possessed person. While I had miraculously managed to stay upright, I had hurt my big toe. This was causing me to limp-pace back and forth, holding my hands above my head, pursing my lips and taking short breaths. Once the pain was under control, it was time to assess the damage. To be honest, it really didn’t look that bad. It looked like maybe I had cracked the toenail, which isn’t bad. I continued my work moving things from the trunk of the car to the table.

After my moving endeavors were completed, I sat down and realized that the stickiness on my flip flop was not water from the rain, but blood from my foot. It turns out I had broken off half my toenail and it was bleeding from underneath. No wonder it was still hurting. And here I thought my tolerance for pain was significantly reduced.

After washing the foot, removing the broken toenail pieces, clipping a small piece of the toenail to reduce future further toenail rippage, and using peroxide to clean the wound, bandaids were applied. I must admit that the foaming and bubbling of hydrogen peroxide fascinates me. As a child, I was told that the bubbling meant that the germs were dying. The more your wound bubbled and foamed when you put the peroxide on it, the dirtier the would is, and the more times you should apply the peroxide. I am not sure if this is true. I suspect it may be completely false. It sounds like something I would be told as an absolute truth as a child, but then later discover that it is a complete falsity. Still, I live by this piece of information as a general rule. The bubbling and foaming wasn’t so much for my toe injury tonight, though, so the peroxide was only applied once. Most of the blood was coming from underneath what was left of the toenail anyway.

And that is my story about how sometimes I am just a little bit clumsy. Often, I can’t remember how I even injured myself. That’s how used to being clumsy I am. I don’t even notice walking into things.