>into my finger.) Yet I remember that when I split the skin on the
>back of my head open at the age of nine and bled a pint or two all
>over myself and and my mother, it felt like a minor bang on the
>noggin; the main reason I wound up freaking out was just seeing that
>much blood pouring out of my body. (Wounds on the scalp don't clot,
>normally, so the bleeding took a long time to stop.)

As a kid I stooped to get something I'd dropped beneath the cast iron sink in my grandmother's bathroom - and when I stood up I split my scalp open. I was very young, so I howled...

When I was in high school, near the end of my senior year I was talking with a friend about how most people we knew had injured themselves during HS, and I'd managed to avoid any noticable injury...

A few minutes later I was running down the hall, jumped down a short flight of steps I had been jumping down all 4 years - and found myself on my back on the floor. I couldn't figure out what happened, so I just go up and strolled into the computer room next door (where I was headed). Then something dripping though my line of sight got my attention. I looked up at the ceiling and couldn't see anything, but when I looked ahead again much more ran past - so I put my hand on my head and it came away soaked in blood. Then I noticed other people in the room starting to stare at me. And I thought "Oh, I'm bleeding. I'd better go into the other room or I'll stain this carpet."

I never freaked out, it was no big deal to me. But everyone else (the secretary in the next room, the school nurse, my mom, etc) flipped.

>six weeks, which was most of the summer. A rather nasty burn on my
>forearm in high school (still have a visible scar) just made me swear

I did this too, slightly younger. My mother had *carpet* in our kitchen, and we'd just had *new* carpet installed. I'd gotten a lecture on how I'd better not get anything on the carpet or I'd be in big trouble, etc. Well, I was talking a Swanson's Salisbury Steak dinner out of the oven and there was an oven rack in the top position, so that when I lifted the dinner my forearm contacted the end of the 400 degree (or so) rack like it was a branding iron. My reflexes said "MOVE YOUR FSCKING ARM!", but I didn't want to hurl gravy around the room - so I had a momentary freeze. So my arm stayed there for a second, and when I moved back (slowly, didn't spill a drop) I left skin on the rack. The scar is almost completely gone - the light has to hit it just right to spot it. (I don't scar much either.)

>a bit. A rather nasty ingrown toenail that resulted in infection and,
>ultimately, surgery, was a minor inconvenience; I barely noticed any
>pain during the entire ordeal, yet my father's then-wife (an RN) told
>me I should have been capable of a shambling stagger at best from
>pain. (The only time the pain from that kept me down was immediately
>after the surgery, when the wrappings -- which made my toe look
>remarkably like Fred Flinstone's -- put an inordinate amount of
>pressure on what was left of my toenail. Once the dressing was off, I
>was fine.)

Wow...

I once dropped a large cast iron ingot so that it managed to land on JUST my big toes. Messed them up, bled a lot. I ended up with an ingrown on the right which became infected. It only bothered me it someone stepped on my foot or something.

I finally had to have surgery, which removed a good bit of both sides of the nail. The doc was quite surprised that I was able to *stand*, let alone walk - let alone say something like "Yeah, it hurts a little." He was one of the docs who told me I must have a very high pain threshhold.

But healing from the surgery? CODEINE! I could feel every heartbeat in the incisions. Kept me on my back a couple of days, popping happy pills.

Then in college I was helping to strike a set and was moving a large floor flat myself when someone ran into me, causing me to drop it... ON JUST THAT TOE.

It crushed the tissue under the nail, and I got another infection. This time I took care of it with scissors, a sharp blade, alcohol to disinfect, alchohol to drink (scotch), and a flame to pass the blades through. I had to remove the nail and some tissue.

>can discern individual spices in many different foods. (And I'm not
>really partial to spicy food; personally, I find spicy heat obscures
>the flavor.)

Really good spicy food (like good Indian or Thai) is spicy but still flavorful.

I very, very use salt on food. Even things other people douse with salt.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay