un-bright child

i was just pushing the last few coffee beans into the grinder (sometimes they get stuck in the chute) when i had this terrible vision of my fingers getting mangled in the blades and pulling out this bloody mess of what was once my dominant hand. i don't know why these kinds of thoughts plague my mind, but i have a strong tendency toward vivid visualization that is often completely out of control. i think it is related to my anxiety that all bad things that can happen probably will if you don't think it through all the way. i got this gift from my mother. and, i think, my genetics. it started early. anyway, with this disgusting image of my bloody hand came the very real memory of the time that i sharpened my little finger in an electric pencil sharpener. this is a true story. i got so interested in this new household device that i locked onto it and lost all reason and practicality. i remember it distinctly. i found myself wondering how far one has to penetrate the device before the swirling of the blades is triggered. i did not find myself remembering that once triggered, there are in fact, blades swirling. so, watching carefully, concentrating intently i slowly lowered my pinky finger (which was small enough to fit so i must have been quite young) into the hole in the top of the sharpener. where is the trigger spot? what makes it "know" that i want it to sharpen? well it all happened too fast to get a clear answer to those questions. there definitely is a trigger spot, as previously presumed. the blades definitely do sharpen. i did in fact hit the trigger and the tiny gouges out of either side of the tip of my little finger were quite the topic of conversation around my household for some time. i think my parents told that story until the embarrassment level of that situation was trumped by the time that i was daydreaming in the car one day with my head lying against my arm and i chewed on a spot on my right biceps for so long that i gave myself a hickey. i didn't even know what a hickey was but i had determined by the fact that my mother always whispered when she said it that it was the kind of thing that a child does not want to do to one's self. she also made me wear a band-aid over it. then she told every person she saw all about it anyway. WTF? so there it is. two dumb things. two band-aids. hours of family entertainment.