Colder Than a Valedictorian's Knuckle

Take a gander at this.

No, it's not an inappropriate appendage, nor an elephant's trunk laying on the the desktop of my dark basement lair, nor mummified remains unearthed by my sweet, sweet Juno. Here's another view.

You might think there's nothing unusual going on in those photos. But you'd be wrong. One last chance to figure it out.

This afternoon, I went to fill my Bubba cup with ice. Actually, I was filling TWO Bubba cups with ice, from Frig II. Not because I'm an ice glutton, but because I did not make a trip to town for a 44 oz Diet Coke (much to the delight of all you lottery-haters, I'm sure), and I planned to have a big Bubba cup of ice water to sip, and a spare Bubba cup of ice to refill it without hiking back up 13 steps. I really miss The Pony.

So...I filled both of my Bubba cups, and decided to take inventory of the ice bin. Sometimes, Frig II has a mind of his own, and decides to ration those frosty semicircles of H2O. Frig II, unlike the Original Frig, has a flap door that can let you peer inside the ice bin. Just as I suspected, the ice bin was full (thanks to no Genius filling a red Solo cup on the hour, only to let it sit around and melt). The metal bar was out, which means Frig II is NOT in an ice-makin' mood. Also, there were about 10 cubes laying on the back partition that the bin slides up against. I always pry them loose and shovel them into the bin. As I did so, Frig II's metal bar began slowly turning to its original location, which meant that Frig II would start making ice again. I dipped my hand down under the ice-making part so I could reach back and pry that last cube off the partition.

OWWWWWW!

I had sliced my ring finger knuckle on some mechanical component of Frig II's ice maker! That's what I thought, anyway. But I was wrong. I pulled that throbbing digit (heh, heh, I said throbbing digit) out of the freezer, expecting it to be dripping blood all over the good ice. Or at least have a gaping gash (heh, heh, no, I won't go there) that might need me to drive myself to the local hospital five miles away for stitches. But my finger looked perfectly normal! For an old-lady hand, as Genius would clarify.

Yet the pain persisted! How could this be? I felt my finger. Not even a scratch! Why was it hurting SO much? It hurt to bend, it hurt to straighten, it just downright hurt. Being a high-pain-threshold kind of gal, I grabbed my two Bubbas and descended to my lair. I put the light on. It was still daytime, you know. I settled down and fired up my New Delly. Took another look at my non-debilitating injury.

MY KNUCKLE HAD A RAISED WHITE BLISTER!

It still hurt like the dickens. Like a burn. The phone rang, Hick having taken a day off work to be on the road again. No, he is not touring with The Redheaded Stranger. Don't expect Hick to make the news because his gasohol-powered tour bus got pulled over for weed. Hick reported that he was halfway to his destination, like that was of interest to me while I was home with a burning finger sporting a white blister. "How could that be, when all I did was reach up under that ice maker?"

"You could have touched the part that freezes the ice."

Oh, dear. This man is in charge of big dangerous machines in a factory that takes giant rolls of steel that arrive two-to-a-semi-truck and make them into saw blades. I can put a plastic ice tray into Frig II, and freeze water into ice, but it's not going to give me a burning blister if I touch it for a nanosecond. I don't know what's in a freezer? Do they use freon? Or has that been outlawed? Hick should know. He probably DOES know. But what comes out his mouth is usually not what he's thinking. At least that's the story he's stuck to since early in our marriage when he told me I was like an elephant, and my skirt reminded him of a circus tent, only later to explain that he meant I had a good memory and a colorful skirt. Uh huh. Let the record show that Hick had only one outbuilding at the time, and could ill afford to be sent packing.

I guess my hand hit a metal tube that carries the coolant to the ice maker, and it was so cold that my knuckle got freezer burn. All I know for sure is that it still hurts like a motherf, still hurts like a son-of-a-b, still hurts like...A LOT!

For the record...do you know how hard it is to take a picture of your right hand with a not-very-smart phone wielded by your left hand, with which you must find a way to focus on the offending knuckle, and push the button to take the picture, while wearing bifocals to see the phone controls, which become useless for focusing once you lean over to push the picture-taker with your nose?