I went to the emergency room yesterday afternoon.

Last year my parents got me a really good set of kitchen knives for Hanukkah. “They’re really sharp,” my mom said, “so be careful with them.”

You know where this is going.

Yesterday afternoon I was slicing a bagel with the serrated bread knife and I sliced into my index finger. Gushing blood, wouldn’t stop. Matt suggested we go to the emergency room, but I didn’t want to deal with that. So I kept applying pressure to my finger on and off for about 30 minutes — but it still wouldn’t stop. So we walked up to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s, a place Matt knows well, because he deals with college students and he’s always taking someone there for something or other. Like a veteran, he immediately grabbed a form and filled it out for me.

They saw me relatively quickly, and eventually the finger stopped bleeding. I did the Sunday New York Times crossword while waiting. (I hurt my right index finger, but I’m left-handed.) I wondered if I’d need stitches, but the nurse didn’t think so. They talked about maybe gluing it up, but once it stopped bleeding they decided they didn’t have to do that either. So the physician’s assistant just cleaned out the wound with saline, smeared bacitracin on it, and wrapped it in gauze. Then I got a tetanus shot.

The gauze somehow came off in the middle of the night, so this morning I washed the finger again, lathered it up with bacitracin, and put a regular ol’ bandaid on it. It’ll be fine.

But my arm is still a little sore from the tetanus shot. Bleah.