Worse Paper Cut Ever

Last Wednesday I suffered what must qualify as the worst paper cut ever.

I picked up a ream of paper at work and slid my hands along the sides of the package with the intent of opening it. Unfortunately, the label on the end of the package slipped underneath the fingernail on my right-hand middle finger, putting a 7 mm cut between my finger and fingernail. After cleaning up the blood and using some super glue to reattach my fingernail, my thoughts turned to the weekend. I had five gigs between Thursday night and Sunday morning, each about four hours in length and each requiring that I slap on my bass (rockabilly and jump blues). Basically I prepared for a weekend of pain and suffering.

To a large extent, the weekend went as I expected: I was in pain. Every time I slapped (which requires pulling the string away from the fingerboard with my right hand) my finger ached. Every once in a while I would try to slap only using only my index finger. Unfortunately, is left my middle finger dangling in the air where on more than one occasion it smacked into the fingerboard or hit a string fingertip-on. By Saturday night, the cut on my finger was big enough to fit a G-string.

I did the best I could to take care of the cut (short of having been more careful opening the package of paper). I used lotion and wrapped my finger at night. During the day I tried to keep it covered and used Polysporin to help it heal. I was really amazed at how well Polysporin worked at speeding up the healing process. Before each gig (and sometimes between sets) I used a little bit of Liquid Skin to avoid opening the cut again. In the end, I learned was a lot about taking care of a cut and a little about how not to open a ream of paper.