Tuesday, February 17, 2009

white

I burned myself at work tonight. That in itself is not surprising. It's the nature of the beast that this job is.

No, the thing about this particular burn is that it turned white, like a frozen kind of dead white.

I was making a shrimp alfredo and accidentally tossed one of the shrimp out of my pan. I went to grab it with tongs and managed somehow to touch a tiny part of my thumb, maybe a half inch long place near the base of my thumb, against one of the pointy parts that are the part of the eye of the stove that holds the pan above the flame.

I actually thought about googling gas burners and/or eyes or whatever it took to figure out what the pointy parts are actually called, but I did in fact not do that. I chose not to. Anyone reading here is welcome to tell me the name of the pointy part, but I can't guarantee any sort of prize.

And the point isn't prizes but that the burn turned white. It did not blister as I'm used to burns doing, though now, a few hours later, it has finally turned into a blister. But at the moment it happened, and then for the next couple of hours, it was just this weird looking white, almost like that bit of frostbite on a ruined steak you just found in the refrigerator.

That's my story for the night. It's at least a little interesting to me, and I know that the people to whom I told about and showed the burn exhibited signs of being mostly nonplussed. I can only imagine how moved you are right now.