NaBloPoMo – Day Twenty-one
MY INJURIES: THE FINGER by me (Jan. 2, 1993 Sat.)
Santa gave us a really special gift: a gerbil! We named him Gus. He is so cute!
When we first met him, there was too much confusion and holding him incorrectly (I wasn’t though) and he bit me!
I was just the next person in line and he attached himself to my finger! Dad had to get him off.
Here is a diagram (you can tell I really like those!)
[see picture below showing the drawing of the palm of my left hand– things I’ve written by the diagram: This is where my finger bends. It was very swollen and painful, but I didn’t get any infection. They say gerbil slobber is cleaner than our own! 
You can tell he has crooked teeth!]
You can click on the picture a couple of times to see bigger and bigger versions…
Okay, the funniest part about the above entry, as found on page 213 of my old journal is the fact that I had to specify which injury I was talking about. As you may remember, I fell down the stairs in September. This was not my first brush with gravity and/or drama, but it’s the first one I’ve had since starting this blog. Never fear; I’m sure there will be more.
The unfortunate part about Gus taking his frustration and fear out on me was that I was holding him properly, but I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was so agitated by the noise, manhandling, and camera flashes, and had I realized just how agitated he was, I would have waited before holding him. He was SO cute, but wow, could he bite! I still have those scars, but they are very faint.
The above journal entry was written during my freshman year in college, while I was on Winter Break. About 10 days prior to that, I have another journal entry that explains how I accidentally got my head slammed in one of the outside doors to my dorm, cutting my ear. No, it didn’t break my glasses (whew!!) and it didn’t require stitches, but looking back, I should have probably had some. I’ve spared you the details (journal entry complete with hand-drawn diagram!) of that incident, but in a nutshell, it involved having a snowball fight late at night while taking a break from studying. In trying to run to safety, one of the guys I was with thought I’d cleared the doorway before he pulled the door shut, but I had not.
Needless to say, the door was heavy and had an automatic closer, and the door cracked me on the side of the head. It all happened so fast; I wasn’t quite sure what had happened. I really didn’t hold my friend responsible, because it happened so quickly. I knew he hadn’t done it on purpose. He apologized profusely, and he did have a fun quote from the night, “It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an ear!”
During my freshman year, I lived in a co-ed dorm. The guys had one wing, and the girls had another. The RA on the guys’ side and the hall director were the ones “on duty,” and they were quite alarmed to see so much blood, but they were both very calm in getting me patched up. The college nurse ended up putting a butterfly strip on it the next morning, and it healed relatively nicely. I still have that scar, too, but you don’t see it unless you know to look.
So, anyway, that’s why it’s funny that I had to distinguish which of my injuries the above journal entry involved. My family was ruthless with the comments, and it took me a while to live that down. In fact, in our main bathroom, we had a MagnaDoodle hanging by the magazine rack. Everyone would take turns drawing parts of a picture and adding to the drawing. One of the funniest ones was a stick figure of me with my ear stuck in a doorway. It wasn’t quite a realistic rendition of events, but I still laugh when I think about that picture.
In fact…look what I found in my old photo album!!
Here is a picture of Gus (right before he bit me…he thinks he’s being accosted by my dad and my brother, so he acts out toward the next unlucky victim…me) and a picture of my fateful encounter with a door, as drawn by one of my sisters:
Fun times. Fun times.
Special Note: Speaking of photos, guess what else I found!? I found some pictures from my car accident!! I’ve posted them over on that post…so, go check ‘em out! They were exactly where I thought they should be. Why I didn’t see them before, I’ll never know. Oh well, had I found them a month ago, I would have never found my old journal! I love it when things work out the way they’re supposed to. 
I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, so that’s all I’m going to say.
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