Singeing myself

I've lost count of the times I've had accidents with a knife or chopper—pricking, slicing, and generally butchering my fingers and thumbs while helping out in the kitchen. And every time, there's blood. Lots of it. And pain. But about nine days ago, I managed to find a whole new way to injure myself—I singed a finger inside the oven. It had only just been switched on, so it wasn’t super hot yet, but nevertheless still hot enough. Luckily, I hit the outer part of my finger, where the skin’s a bit tougher. Even so, the moment my finger touched the metal, there was an immediate zzzt sound as the heat lifted the top layer of skin, exposing the raw bit underneath. Oddly enough, there was barely any blood. If it had been a cut, I’d have slapped a plaster on it straight away. But what really surprised me was how relatively little it hurt compared with a cut. There's a lot of tenderness when the open wound was touched accidentally, but no great pain. So for the past 10 days, I’ve been nursing the finger, dabbing on my family’s traditional, mysterious yellow ointment and checking it now and then to see how it’s healing—slowly but surely. Just goes to show, even at my age, there’s always a new experience waiting.