I Nearly Cut My Big Toe Off

Yep, I almost cut my big toe off. It sucked.

The Wife and I finally decided to replace our craptacular old hand-me-down computer desks, if you can call ten pounds of cheap steel and chip board a desk, with actual nice mostly wood desks. Nothing huge and over stated, just something with an actual decent sized surface and a keyboard drawer, and maybe sturdy enough that a flailing knee won't threaten to demolishing the whole thing.

So we got them, and naturally since we're on a budget these are the kinds of things that require a little self-assembly.

In order to get into the packaging, I had to cut some weird plastic strapping, and naturally got the sharpest thing around, a utility knife with a new-ish blade.

So there I was, merrily hacking away at strapping and cardboard when something I was leaning over to cut popped loose unexpectedly, and the blade swung low and wide and I clipped the knuckle on my right big toe. :shock:

Surprisingly...not painful. Cut an inch long gash in my sock and parted the flesh like it wasn't there. In fact, the only thing stopping me from severing the tendom across the top of my toe was the knuckle bone that neatly deflected the blade up and away.

I missed any capilaries or anything vital, but it was a deep cut, right down to the bone, and laid open the whole top knuckle on the toe. It was so sharp it didn't hurt much, but it was the kind of thing that my mind instantly knew was deep and not going to be pretty. That's a creepy kind of spine-crawling sensation, I gotta say.

My immediate reaction was to say "Oh shit. Yep, ok, that's gonna bleed, that's a good one, going to limp off and dress my wound now." while my wife looked on with great concern trying to determine how badly I'd fucked myself up.

All in all I guess it wasn't that bad. The hit on the bone seems to have made my whole foot ache something fierce, much worse than the pain from the cut itself. I probably should have gotten stitches, but being a manly American male I decided to clean it up and slap a bandaid on it and then tell lies about how I got such a vicious scar to impressionable children later.

...

You know, this did get me thinking though. I'm a big gamer; I play D&D, and online games, a lot of high fantasy stuff. And people in these settings have swords and knives and all sorts of sharp pointy things. I know they're games, but holy shit, getting stabed or slashed by something large and sharp is a terrifying prospect. In real life, there's no

 "Ooh! That's a 5 hit point sword wound!"

It's more like:

"HOLY SHIT! AAAAAAAGGGGKKK!!!! I'VE BEEN STABBED!! OH MY GOD SOMEONE CALL AN AMBULANCE, MY LIFE BLOOD AND ORGANS ARE LEAKING OUT!!! OH THE HORROR!!!"

:hosed:

I mean, really, that's some scary shit. I nicked my toe and I'm all freaked out from the feeling of two tiny flaps of formerly joined flesh parting and sticking and congeling with blood and all that. An actual sword or axe wound would be fucking insane, like scream in terror and run away unable to function insane.

I think a lot of people, especially game designers, miss how terrifying and painful and debilitating getting badly cut would be. If I get cut by a sword and start bleeing out I'm going to run the fuck away. I mean, really, gaming has gotten to the point that almost all the characters or PC's are like the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail. "It's only a flesh wound!"

I mean, please, this is just getting ridiculous.

Maybe more game designers need to get into sword and gun fights to enhance their sense of realism on the battle field... :cheers:

Oh, and don't mind the armored Pigeons up there, that was another "must stop brain from melting" meeting thing.