Night of the Living Butter Knife

My family loves cookies.

My mom’s cookie recipes are legendary. Whenever I would take cookies on debate trips in high school most of the team would descend on the tupperware container like a pack of rabid wolves, cleaning me completely out before I could get one.

Every weekend my family makes cookies. A lot of time we only get to the dough before it’s gone.

This is usually only a danger to our waistlines and arteries. One bleak and terrible day, however, it was dangerous to life and limb.
I was in second grade, trying to learn and study new things. I liked cookies, my mom liked cookies, and so Mom asked me,

The secret to my mom’s cookies is actually butter. Massive, massive amounts of butter.

We are all going to die from heart disease at 35.

In the case of sugar cookies, it’s several cubes of butter, plus a couple tablespoons. You lop of the piece you need and throw it in with the rest. It should go without saying that when you cut the butter, it should be ON THE CUTTING BOARD AND NOT IN YOUR HAND. It should also not be FROZEN.

 You should be proud. I so rarely draw hands on this site. It is even rarer to have hands not drawn in what George W. Bush called the “One-Fingered Victory Salute.”

My mom was very pregnant, and had sat down while I put the ingredients in. She did not see me with the butter in hand, or the knife slicing through the air with a deadly swish. As anyone who has seen horror movies knows, carnage followed.

Blood spurted out of my left index finger like a fountain filled with cranberry juice. A shrill scream filled the kitchen.

Perhaps this is why I like geysers.

My mom struggled to her feet and lurched to the counter, white-faced with terror. She inspected my finger, then grabbed the phone to call my Grandma Joy, who lives nearby. My then-teenage uncle answered, barely conscious.

My mom put me, still blubbering, in the car. The bloodstained cookie dough was forgotten.

The doctor at the hospital, upon seeing my knife wound, determined that the best course of action would be to USE A KNIFE AND INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE WOUND.
Somehow, you see, this sadistic butter knife had managed to slice the nerve in my finger in half, like a strand of spaghetti on a mob boss’s plate.

In addition to stitches on my nerve, I also got multiple stitches on my finger. I have never enjoyed being sewn up like an old garment, though it made me the center of attention in class the next week.
I did eventually recover. The scar is in the shape of a cross; before I understood what political correctness was, I called it my “Catholic scar.” It rarely troubles me anymore. Except when it does.