Wound

By Ross Winston

       Feeling a bit like Ralphie from A Christmas Story, I threw the wrapping paper on the floor hoping, praying that it was—yes! a genuine Swiss Army Knife, complete with blade, scissors, file, toothpick and tweezers. My years of insisting that I was could be safe and responsible had paid off. I clasped tightly to my little red symbol of manhood and maturity. I had just received much more than a $12 knife: I had received confirmation of the trust my parents had in me.

       Later as I whittled furiously, my mom stepped outside and told me to come back in and finish opening my presents. She had to repeat herself twice; the roaring of my ego and pride drowned her out the first time. I began to fold the blade, failing to realize that my thumb was exactly where the blade, still razor sharp from the factory, was about to be.

      While I managed to fight back tears from the physical injury, the combination of my mom’s “I told you he was too young” stare towards my dad, and in turn my dad’s “You are such a disappointment” look opened the floodgates. My brother’s hysterical laugh delivered the knockout punch. My years of repeating that I too could be safe, that I was old, smart, mature enough for a knife--they haunted me. My ego was the cricket between a steel pole and a pile driver. Nothing could give. Nothing could cushion or comfort me. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to be invisible.

       My red dripping confidence and its subsequent bandage really did everything but allow me to hide. It stopped the blood, but only sliced deeper and wider into my pride. It protected my flesh from contaminants, but filled the gash in my confidence with sand, pressing and grinding, forcing itself to be heard, to be felt. The healing process only truly began a month later when I no longer had a physical bandage and was finally was re-gifted my precious knife, not because I begged for it, or even said a word about it. Rather, I regained it because I had reached a new level of maturity, which one can only reach through error, through failure and injury.

       Whenever I look at my right thumb, I am reminded of the wound I incurred on my fifth birthday. I am reminded of the pain I felt from my parents’ countenances and my brother’s giggling, but also of the strength I have built as a result. I am more careful not only with a knife, but also with over promising in life, in my abilities. I am reminded that sometimes the most painful injury is not an injury at all. Sometimes, it is the reactions to an injury that cause more pain and learning than the injury itself.