The One-Upper

You know those people whose stories can always top yours? The people whose labor is always just a little longer and more painful than yours, or whose crazy relatives are always just a little crazier than yours?

Apparently they start young.

Yesterday Ellie decided to get a snack of cheese for herself and her friend. This involved slicing it with the extra-sharp slicer, the one that once caused me to lose a small piece of my thumb.

I was upstairs wasting time Christmas shopping online when I heard the scream. It was the kind of scream that tells me something is truly wrong, not the kind of scream that tells me someone’s sisters are "out to get them".

I found Ellie sobbing halfway up the stairs, cradling her left pinkie finger in the other hand, trying valiantly through her pain and fear to keep the blood from dripping onto the carpet. Her friend was behind her, full of concern.

I led her into the bathroom, where we rinsed off the blood so I could assess the damage (not too much, thankfully, despite all the blood). As Ellie hyperventilated at the sight of so much red washing down the drain, her friend calmly offered a few sympathetic words of comfort:

“It’s not so bad, Ellie. One time I had a paper cut, and it was so much worse than that.”