…now I’ve done it! I’ve wrecked my fingerprint!

Now I’ve done it! I’ve wrecked my fingerprint! Yes…yes I did. I had noble intentions as I dismantled the electric pencil sharpener… Hell bent on fixing it. My motivation was multi-faceted… First and foremost… THE NOISE! I sit right next to the beastly thing. It’s roar deafening as each fourth grader lined up with their handful of pencils. I was edging closer to acting on that burning impulse to grab one of those sharpened pencils to jab in my eye!!! (Total Ally McBeal moment ! Watched the whole thing flash through my mind.). I decided it would be a waste of a good Dixon Ticonderoga pencil.  
Secondly, I’m a fixer. It’s what I do. I’m driven internally for real. I tackle the photocopier when there’s a jam… Love to untangle the knots in tiny link necklaces… It’s just who I am… Fixer! 

So when the line settled and the students got started on their morning work… I moved in… Like Mcguyver . I emptied the compartment of the shavings and approached the sharpener that had been assaulting my ears for way too long now. If only I had known the horror I was about to inflict upon myself… Might that have stopped me? Well … No… No it wouldn’t have! Much like a skilled bomb technician I reached inside (yes I unplugged it first… A complete idiot I’m not… Well perhaps that’s debatable…). I turned the mechanism and successfully dislodged some of the jammed pieces of pencil lead… And here’s where it all went awry… I wasn’t satisfied of course so I reached in my hand one more time to be sure I’d done a thorough job…my ears were already poised to thank me for a job well done, and then it happened… As I was manually turning the sharpening cylinder I deeply sliced the tip of my pointer finger. I had to act fast yet calmly and with little noticeable reaction as here I was surrounded by the class of fourth grade students.  

The sink across the room looked miles away but I had no choice… Blood was beginning to pour out of my finger and would surely leave a gory trail should I wait any longer. It seemed so far in that moment and each hurried step felt like slow motion. I barely made it to the sink and turned on the cold water without blood dripping and revealing the horror show that once was my finger. I stood at the sink for sometime before wrapping my pointer in a swath of paper towels. A decision had to be made… Do I consult the nurse? Absolutely NOT! I went to the teachers lounge and prepared a small ice pack … And moved on with my day.  

I must say it took about a week for my finger to heal…which means it also took that long before I knew that my fingerprint was wrecked… You see, I programmed my iPhone to unlock by fingerprint recognition. Once the bandages were gone I gave it a whirl… And there it was… The infamous eh-eh (funny game show sound clip here) the ‘nope no way you got it wrong’ shake on the screen of my phone. Repeated attempts only confirmed it… I had altered my fingerprint. The rest of this story is… I reprogrammed my phone to read my thumb. This seemed logical … I cannot fit my thumb inside the electric pencil sharpener! I also started carrying this everywhere I go…