November 16, 2014

Meat Is A Murderer

They say physical pain is all in your head, so I guess I was imagining things many years ago when I hyper extended my left leg while playing hockey, causing a tiny muscle in my groin to unhook itself from cartilage.

Yea, I'm gonna go right ahead and speculate that the pain was right up there with giving birth without anaesthetic. Doctors in Emergency supported this theory when they mentioned that the intensity of my discomfort would be greater than a broken bone. Fantastic! Because the muscle was now just flappin' about in it's unholy unhooked state, every time I'd get a little chilly or tense up, the muscle would contract and all sorts of fun nerve endings would have a party, with me as the guest of honour.

So, every little bump I get nowadays has paled in comparison, and I use the hockey injury as a benchmark of sorts. Playing the same sport about ten years ago, I twisted a knee. This time however it was ball hockey, and to complete the emasculation, it was a girl who caused the injury. See, due to my unbelievable skill and incredible lightning fast feet, she decided that it was a good idea to slow me down by inserting her hockey stick in between them. I stepped on the stick and twisted a knee. I invented several new curse words that day.

Which brings me to the point. A couple of days ago I was fortunate enough to suffer another injury, albeit a relatively minor one and a tenth of the pain levels of those mentioned above. For a quick dinner, I decided to throw a couple of turkey sausages in the oven....can you see where this is going? No. No you can't.

I was nearly murdered by this the other day.
The sausages were in the freezer. Not having time to thaw them out, or the sense to defrost them for a few minutes in the microwave, I opened the package and naturally they were frozen together. For a moment I thought about taking a knife and gently stabbing the permafrost in between, but then thought..wait..that might be dangerous. That's what you call irony kids.

I don't need no stinkin' knife, I tell myself. I can just pull them apart. I'm a man goddammit and frozen meat won't defeat me. But these things were fused solidly and battling me good. It's as if they knew their culinary destiny and would simply not go down without a fight. I pulled harder , and harder, and voila! - they came apart. But wait..what is that shooting pain I feel in my finger? It was the equivalent of stubbing your toe very hard, but what in the hell could be causing this pain? As it normally is in my house, the lighting was dim. Looking at my finger, nothing seemed to be broken, bleeding or bent. Turning up the light however, I came face to face with my foe.

In pulling the sausages apart, a sliver of the frozen meat wedged itself underneath a finger nail, forcing it slightly up and away from the skin. It hurt, but I found it funny. The meat-sicle was about 1/2" wide and I had visions of it slowly forcing my fingernail off the longer it remained, so I yanked it out. To this day it throbs a bit, but I seemed to have dodged a bullet fired from the voting members at the Darwin Awards.

During this incident, I'm sure that turkey's ghost was up in turkey heaven and smiling - for just a brief moment, the prey had become the predator.

1 comment:

  1. I once attempted the "knife stabbing method" to get frozen burgers apart. It worked really well. Although i had to throw the burgers out since they were now covered in my blood. Actually, almost everything in the kitchen was covered in my blood. Now every time i look at my mangled, scarred finger, I crave a burger.

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