The other day I was listening to NPR and they had a special about new designs in razor blades. In the program, they were discussing a sort of razor blade and the commentator asked the man if she could see it. Of course he said "yes" and proceeded to narrate himself trying to pry the razor blade out of the disposable head. My body went into spasms and I had to switch the channel. Because here is what was going to happen next I was sure:Narrator: They sure are in there tight.
Man: Well, yes, we have four tightly packed razor blades all sonically welded in place, oh, geez, silly me...
Narrator: You've cut yourself, are you ok?
Man; No, I'm fine. You can just see how great these are. I mean this is a really deep cut across my index.
Narrator: Listeners, I know this is gross what we're describing to you but really, it's amazing how easily these slice into human flesh. It looks like a cut steak.
Man: State of the art, really. You could put this on a string and slice a horse in half. Let's pull back the separated skin here and really look how deep this nick is.
Narrator: Is that bone I see? What a testimony to this razor!
I hate cuts. Even writing this has made my arms tense up and my gag reflex do a couple exercises. It's not the blood, I can deal with the blood. I've seen blood, lots of it. It's seeing inside me. The meat. The flesh. Seeing it peeled back.
Listen, I like science. I'm fascinated with astronomy in particular.
Geology and physics can entertain me for hours. I'll read books, go to lectures and museums. But then I come to this very sharp divide in anatomy. One hand I'm amazed, baffled, and intrigued by the complexity of the human animal. In particular, cadavers. I read a wonderful book called Stiff, that Valerie recommended to me, about what happens to donated bodies. Cool, awesome. I want them to blow up my body or put it in a car accident if that will help save people's lives. And I'm all about organ donation. Hack me up and auction those bad boys. Peel me like an orange and put that skin to use. I care nothing for dead bodies. My own religious conviction are that dead bodies are no more than dirt, than a fleeing anthill of molecules.But alive? Oh holy crap, do NOT get a knife near me. I have no interest in my insides. Thinking about a surgery makes my body go into a big "EWWW!" On the flipside, I'm totally okay with puncture wounds. Needles don't freak me out. I'd rather be shot than cut. Stabbed than cut. If I ever get into such a situation, I will beg the knife wielder to reverse his grip.
Edward Scissorhands ranks among the scariest movies I've ever seen.
achk. don't write things like this. i'm all "cringey." a shared aversion.
ReplyDeleteThe slicing of skin, even a slice as small as a paper cut is nasty. the poking of skin isn't nearly as bad, even at all.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I would take a bullet before a blade.
James, you kill me. But cutting up bodies can be cool (I am not a freak I am not a freak I am not a freak). I had Brother Davis for a humanities teacher in Rexburg and he had a lot of great stories about being the city coroner. County coroner. Whatever. In any case, cool stories. I was retelling some today on my way back from the trail, so it's nice I can comment about him here as well. Did you know, for example, that after they've cut up the organs, they put the several cubed pieces back into ziplock bags and sew them back up into your body so you don't have great sagging gaps for your open-casket funeral? Just imagine putting ziplocked cubed meat back into a dead guy? OR, more fun, imagine NOT putting them in ziplock bags, but scattering the cubed meat helter skelter into the hole from whence they came, the liver mingling with pieces of the heart, the lungs, a mosaic of bloody pulpy organ and artery. It could be beautiful. I could induce vomiting. I think I'll let Bro. Davis handle that stuff.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your new ghost moniker makes me laugh. I like especially what your scary ghost persona has listed as his favorite movies.
several typos in last comment. I would just let them be and go on my merry way, but I wanted to alert the reader that it is not ME inducing the vomiting. I rarely induce vomiting. And I'll stop posting gross responses on your blog. Apologies, apologies.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I'm saying, Em. I'm okay with dead people flesh. There is a threshold period, I don't like new bloody oozy bodies. A little death pallor serves me well.
ReplyDeleteIs this a new revelation for you James? As I recall growing up, you had a problem when your mother pulled the skin off chicken to cook it. We had a very LONG conversation regarding this. I remember it only because it was probably the oddest conversation I have ever had. LOL!
ReplyDeleteWatch out for those razor blades...muahahahah
This is gross.
ReplyDeleteI'm disappointed in you, James. I think you need to confront this phobia. The next time I see you, which, hopefully will be at the AWP conference next spring, you had better be covered with incisions indicating your progress.
ReplyDeleteI read this in the paper. It was in the funny weird news section, but it made me really sad. I thought you might want to use it for a poem idea.
ReplyDeleteIn Forst, Germany, in May, a 43-year-old man and a 12-year-old boy vied in a spitting-for-distance contest from a second-story balcony, the grown-up, trying for extra momentum, thrust himself forcefully up to the railing, launched his saliva, and accidentally fell to his death.
I just imagine the two sharing a moment of youthful exuberance and both of them then falling head first into tragedy.
P.S. I don't know what to think when you are the first person I think of after reading something like this.
I do not understand this squeamishness over the inner workings of the human body. My son, Joshua, used to go to A&P lab with me when he was 4 yrs old and watch us cut on the cadavers. My son, Joe, the doctor obviously can get into the meat of any situation. He really enjoyed looking at the pictures of my kidney which had to be removed. But none of my family want to look at the picture taken during my colonoscopy--even though it's squeaky clean and shiny. Go figure.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I should post it on my blog.
Mrs. Norris
Norris. For the love of all that is good and decent, don't post that picture. In fact, don't even refer to that picture.
ReplyDeleteWhat picture?
ReplyDeleteNorris
Is your train of thought missing a caboose? The picture you were speaking of, oh, one comment above mine.
ReplyDeleteJames, I'm very sorry that talk of my mother's colon has usurped your blog. It is possibly the last thing I could have wished for you.
ReplyDeleteSteven,
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you do think of me when these things happen. You know how I like the absurd tragedies and like to write about them. Oh, keep them coming. Valerie pointed out that one of my themes in writing is pity. I write about events or people that I think people should pity.
Mrs Norris and Stubbers,
Wow. I don't know what I would do with a colonoscopy picture. Probably vomit into my hands? Or not. Who knows? Sometimes how foreign and unreal the inside of the body looks to me gives a strange sense of distance. It's the peeling back of skin like a tent flap that gives me the shivers.
Now a removed kidney. It might gross me out for a second but I feel like I'd want to heft it. See how heavy that bad boy is. Did you feel lighter at all? Did you ever push there to see if it felt like an empty cavity?
If someone was operating on me and I woke up, I would make buzzing sounds like in the board game Operation.