The Hard Pears

A week in a paper bag with a ripe banana did nothing, nothing. The hard pears were still hard pears, and now they smelled like banana. Fruit should never take this long to ripen, not once it's in the bin waiting to be bought. I wanted the pears today, I wanted them days ago. But what can you do? You just chuck 'em in a bag with a banana and grit your teeth and complain and eat apples or something.

But I was going to have those pears. Today I needed them, I needed those pears today, don't ask me why, don't ask me why the fruit beckons. It just beckons! It's the primate inside me, the neanderthal, the beast that just wants to bite into nature's juicy flesh. Plus pair it with a sharp cheddar.

I needed the chef's knife. That's how hard these pears were, I needed the stupid chef's knife. And I was angry, angry at the fruit, angry at life, just angry. It's not good to mix anger with knives, or maybe it's good for some people, for murderers, although murdering's bad, so I'll just stick with do not mix anger with knives. I'd gotten the plate, prepared the cheese slices, and was hacking away at the fruit on my bamboo cutting board. Why were they so hard? What was so complicated? Why did I pick these pears? Why did I pick any pears at all?! Why couldn't I wait a little longer? Why did my thumb hurt?

Bleeding, blood, trickling down. Maybe I only grazed myself, I thought, maybe this pink bit is just a flap. And I saw it, looking down, there it was, on the counter, a slice of my thumb, nail attached, sticking to the surface. I grabbed my thumb and pinched as hard as I could, hoping that would stop the flow, but it only seemed to squeeze out more. I dropped the knife (what was I still doing with the knife, was the thumb not enough, did I need to keep cutting?!) and got a plastic bag, filled it with ice, stuck my whole hand in the thing. That helped the pain subside. I tied a dish rag around the end to keep it on my arm. I didn't know what to do with the tiny bit. I chucked that in its own icy bag and called my neighbor. Next stop, hospital.

Well, they just chucked that second icy bag into the bio-hazard bin. A piece of me, however small, is in a landfill somewhere, buried with garbage and syringes and miscellaneous medical waste. Fantastic.

When I got home—gigantic bandage wrapped around my appendage blowing it up to cartoonish size—I looked at my bloody snack. I had forgotten all about it. I was so close to being done. I only had a couple slices left. But now, there, ruined, covered in blood, my pears and cheese. And the blood soaked into the wood. That's the problem with these wooden cutting boards. The juices, the liquids, they seep down into the fibers, they stain, they're harder to wash. I'd never get this blood out. Never.