A story about avocados

I do a lot of exercise. Not surprisingly my exercises of choice do not involve an enormous amount of coordination. Running and CrossFit. Because I am not very coordinated.

CrossFit is about as sophisticated as I will ever get because I’m pretty accident prone. Am quite sure the dry cleaner who owns the shop under my CrossFit gym has me marked for the numerous weights I’ve dropped causing endless complaints about paint on his ceiling dropping into his shop.

As a kid my Mum told me I could rarely walk through a doorway without hitting the side of it and I was always doing things like grazing my shins jumping in our pool and my knees still bear the scars from public school asphalt playgrounds of the 70’s and 80’s.

Somehow I managed to be a pretty good swimmer and netball player until I turned 16 and decided that boys were far more interesting but netball has left me with weak ankles from many uncoordinated landings and subsequent sprains. Luckily for me swimming was pretty safe but there were many minor finger injuries from tumble turns gone wrong.

I am a frequent spiller of coffee, smasher of glasses, dropper of cutlery and all round klutz.

Anyone who has ever had a meal with me, especially my Twitter Lunch Club, can confirm I am unable to eat without spilling food all over myself and I don’t own many items of clothing without chilli sauce stains.

I have several food related scars on my arms. One from cutting a cheese packet open and slicing the knife into my forearm and another on my left hand from sticking a knife between frozen meat patties and ending up with the pointy bit of the knife in my palm.

Which brings me to the avocados story.

When I first met Rob I had only recently split from a boyfriend of about seven years and we had lived together and shared a dog together so were quite committed. Relationships like that are always tricky when they end so we still had quite a bit of contact while my new relationship with Rob had started. Nothing sinister mind you.

My ex-boyfriend had moved out of our place and in with my brother and they had both invited me over for dinner. Rob and I had only just started seeing each other so he didn’t know I was going for dinner. I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, we just weren’t at the point of our relationship where we checked in with everything.

Because neither my ex or my brother could cook to save a life, I had told them if they bought all the ingredients I’d cook. When I arrived I met their new flatmate who was on his way out the door but happened to be a chef.

The chef told me I could use all his knives and pans but to be really, really careful as he’d just had his knives sharpened.

I rolled my eyes and ignored him and mumbled something about not being an idiot.

Typically, my brother had bought an avocado that was completely un-ripe and rock hard however I was making salmon and avocado pasta so it didn’t matter too much and I started to cut it.

Seconds later flatmate chef’s super sharp knife went straight through the hard avocado, through the seed and straight into the palm of my hand, severing my nerve, artery and tendon.

It was around this time I wished I hadn’t rolled my eyes at the chef with the sharp knives.

I dropped the knife and ran my hand under cold water and could see all sorts of white boney bits that you aren’t supposed to see in your hand and knew I was in trouble. I held my other hand over the wound and walked into the lounge room and told the boys I night need to go to the medical centre.

By this stage because I’d severed an artery, blood was dripping off my elbow like a waterfall. My brother started to run around in panic and got me a huge bath towel to wrap around my arm and my ex went a weird shade of white and had to sit down with his head between his knees. From memory he may have had to go to the bathroom to vomit.

My ex (let’s call him James because he is called James) took me to the medical centre where the doctor took one look at me and said “what on earth are you doing here, go to hospital emergency”. So we did.

James then took me to emergency and we sat in triage. As we were waiting for the triage nurse I started to feel pretty sick as I’d lost quite a bit of blood by then. There was a woman standing next to me with her husband who had chest pains and when I told the nurse I really needed to see someone quickly as I’d already been delayed at the medical centre, had lost a lot of blood and thought I might faint, the woman said “oh here she goes, trying to get ahead of us in the triage queue”.

So I unwrapped my hand and shoved it right up close to her face and used some words that had lots of f’s in them.

We finally saw the doctor and they told me I had to have surgery to sew the nerve, artery and tendons back together but they couldn’t do it until the next day after I’d fasted for an anaesthetic so they’d bandage my hand up and I’d go home and come back the following morning.

Which is where the problem lay.

My car was at James’s place, I couldn’t drive anyway and wasn’t going to stay the night at his place.

So I had to call Rob who was living close by the hospital. “Um, I’ve cut my hand badly and need you to pick me up. Is it okay if I stay at your place because I don’t have my car”. I could hear the confusion in his voice but he said he’d come and get me.

Then I said “I’m actually here with James, just so you know”.

AWKWARD.

After ten billion anxiety attacks, Rob walked through the door. There I was standing in triage, ex boyfriend on one side, new boyfriend on the other and I had to introduce them.

“James this is Rob, Rob this is James“. Oh dear God I thought I was going to die from embarrassment.

They shook hands and I had one of those weird out of body experiences.

Then James left and I was alone with Rob. I explained to him how it all happened and he was totally fine with it all and we left the hospital. Me, very embarrassed, and Rob probably thinking who is this weird clumsy chick I have managed to get involved with.

After that I didn’t eat avocados for about 10 years and to this day I have no feeling in my left index finger. Here’s a photo of my fugmo ugly scarred hand. To the middle you can still see the meat pattie scar from when I was about 12.

The end.