Last week I burned the FUCK out of my hand.

You must be wondering, how is this funny? Well, if you have a little 3 Stooges in you, which we all do, it’s already funny. Something hurt me and I said ow and you laugh. The end.

No, seriously, that’s the end of the post.

JAYKAY, y’all. I’m a woman, I never shut up. Durr. You’re not getting off that easy.

In one of the many Disney-Pixar (that sounds like a plug, I assure you, I’m not hot enough to warrant it) animated flicks of yore, called Over the Hedge, there’s a scene in which a squirrel chugs a Red Bull and experiences an insane rush of taurine or whatever the fuck pseudo shit they put in it, and time slows down and he’s moving at the speed of light. I had that moment at work. I moved so quick that in the second and a half the tea machine’s (for the uninitiated thats a large metal thing the size of a garbage can that brews about 9 gallons of tea in 9 minutes) display flashed off, I observed that the tea was empty, needed to be brewed, and automatically reached for the filter-holder-thing to start brewing another…barrel. Keg. Cask. England. India. Whatever one calls entirely too much tea in one place. Which, because this all happened in the span of literally, a second and a half, I didn’t see that the tea machine was actually ON, and the filter-holder-thing was full to the brim of hot tea and water, which sloshed all over my hand and wrist when I pulled it out of the machine.

I’m pretty sure I let out a squeal that would have made the hillbillies from Deliverance proud. I also hopped, which would also make hillbillies proud, because don’t they do that when they accidentally purposely shoot each other in the foot?

Now, I get burned all the time. I get bruised all the time. I’m not a victim of abuse, I just happen to walk into shit. A lot. And I never remember when. I’m thinking my brain has to come to the conclusion that it happens so often to me that it’s just decided “Fuck it, this is a waste of gray matter. She doesn’t need to remember where that mushroom stamp came from.”

So, I walk around for a second, majorly grimacing, and am already blowing it off as just another motherfucking burn from my motherfucking job that I LOVE, until I realize that, um, wow, owch, stings, phew, wow that stings, uuuhh, FUCK IT HURTS. OH, FUCK. BLOODY BUGGERING HELL IT HURTS LIKE THE DOGS BOLLOCKS CUNT SHIT OW.

Of course, I work with a bunch of nurses. Yeah, didn’t you know? Everyone I work with is an R.N. Or they’re pansies. Wait, thats the same thing. Five people immediately come to me and diagnose my burn, prescribe treatment, all the while nodding like God whispered in their ear the secret to this common injury, Le BURN.

Cold water. Lukewarm water. Ice water. No, fuck that, Jen, plunge your hand into the ice well where people drink their Pepsis from. This one was good:  ”Hey, Jen, aloe really helps. The plant, the leaves you get from the grocery store.”

I almost asked that person if they were going to shit either an aloe plant or a Publix and stand in line for me and buy me some aloe, because you know, WE DON’T HAVE AN ALOE PLANT LAYING AROUND THE KITCHEN. Thanks for the UN-HELP.

I don’t remember what the hell temperature water that I stuck my hand under, I do remember that for the next 30 minutes I walked around with my hand in a pitcher filled with water and a few ice cubes, while my darling co workers pointed to the warning on the tea machine every chance they got and read to me like I was Ray Charles, “Hey, Jen….just so you know…this says Caution. HOT. ” And the next person would do it like it was an original idea and start laughing uproariously. That part made me laugh. The idiotic repetition. Apes. I tell people I work at a zoo all the time, and when I replace the people in work stories I tell with random African animals, it’s like reading the perfect Mad Lib.

I don’t know what it is about a person walking around with their hand in a pitcher, but goodness people STARE. What, you’ve never seen someone bathe one part of their body before? We’re a Mexican restaurant, for chrissakes. Never heard of a Spanish shower? Jesus.

Now, my boss, Mr. Hardcore-if-I-can-do-it-then-why-the-fuck-can’t-you who works 80 hours a week and is at least partially insane, sees the burn and tells me I’m going home. I almost fell over. I could be pregnant and my water could break, and he’d expect me to finish my shift at least and THEN go to the hospital. After I mopped up the mess.

When he said that I took a second look at my hand that I had been icing in a pitcher and carrying around like Thing Addams and realized that my burn was a little bit worse than I thought. Mr. Hardcore looks again and says “That’s gotta come off.”

I had a House TV moment and did a what the fuck, WHAT is coming off and why? Because you looked at it and I have botulism? My hand? No, my ring. Well, ok, I’ll take my ring off, see, no big…..OW. My hand had swollen up like that evil chick’s I sat next to in Texas. Yeah, fat women can’t take their rings off. I know this now. It doesn’t happen. I bet if a jeweler did a study on the jewelry found on fat women’s fingers he’d conclude that its all from the 70′s, when it went on, stayed on through pregnancy, birth, raising kids, getting fat, getting divorced, and then eating brownies everyday afterwards.

So I go into the back, where the office is located, sit down, and take my hand back out of the pitcher. Oh, that sweet pitcher. Such relief. Taking it out of the pitcher was like putting your eyeball next to a lightbulb. Because I’m guessing that would be pretty effing painful. It BLEW. He pulls out a pair of dykes or wiresnips or some handy-dandy man tool (I actually know my way around tools quite well, let’s just pretend I don’t to make you feel better) and cuts off the ring on my middle finger. The time it took for him to locate said tool he made me take my hand out of the water, because he insisted it was too cold and my arm shouldn’t feel like an icecube, too. I totally cried. I’m not a crier. Remember, I walk into furniture and hurt myself all the time; don’t cry. I’m pretty good with pain. This fucking hurt. Like that bitch from high school. Or, those bitches. I should say it hurt like the cheerleading squad from high school. I should not write analogies professionally.

I sniffled a bit and hugged my mother-at-work, she patted me on the back and gave me an aspirin which was promptly taken away from me from my dad-at-work, Mr. Hardcore, as soon as she left the office because he insisted it was bad and would thin my blood. (Wasn’t that the point? See, nurses. They’re all nurses. CERTIFIABLE, ya see.) I took some acetaminophen, grabbed my purse, sat at the bar morosely and sulked over lost wages and how my masturbating hand was out of comission, and eventually left. I got to drive home with my elbows, and that was kind of a learning experience. Except that hopefully I’ll never have to do it again.

I told my best friend this, and she was all like, “Yeah, I’ve so totally done that before.”

“Driven with your elbows?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, why?”

“Church learning activity in high school. Was supposed to teach us how we take our body parts for granted, so we like, did everything with our elbows.”

Can I get a wtf? Crazy ass Mormons. They just didn’t want you to touch your no-no place for a week. DUH. I get it, too bad you guys didn’t. I bet that kid that wore his shorts just a little too short figured out how to stroke the shaft with his elbows. Thats why he’s on Broadway in NYC right now. Hello, cliche.

Anyway, I’m getting off track. Theres not really much more to say about me burning my hand. I impressed myself with writing an entire post about it. But, wait, there’s MORE!

I was such a source of amusement it warranted a picture. And today, at work, almost 2 weeks later, I reached for the tea machine and jumped 3 feet in the air when everyone in the kitchen yelled, “JEN! NO.”

I’m not allowed to touch the tea machine. This burn has made me just a little more American.

Also, the title for this post is inspired by Dr. Bishop from Fringe. He says posit a lot, and golly gee, I just love that word.