"Jonathan Cook" wrote in message
m...
"riverman" wrote in message
...

Fortunately,
I could then use the knife tip to press the pointy end through my joint
and
remove it at the knuckle.

That certainly deserves sentence-of-the-month! I suppose in the context
it really was fortunate, but my idea of the word tends to imagine quite
different images than the above...

Jon.
PS: If someone's posting a story to top riverman's, warn me so I
can get some smelling salts on hand...

Heh heh. Nerves of steel, even for an 11 year old.

Since posting that story, I've had several moments of contemplating my left
thumb and remembering that day. Not much damage was done. There's a very
tiny scar right at the cuticle where it still grows a little crooked, and
another tiny white scar right at the hinge of my knuckle. When it happened,
I was mostly freaked out at seeing this thing stuck in my thumb and not
moving an inch. But pushing it through was easy: for the first time in about
an hour, I felt that there was a way to remove it that had some hope.

It wasn't really as bad as it sounds. The hook was above the knuckle
joint: it fortunately didn't go deep, but mostly travelled through the loose
space between the thumbnail and knuckle. If you check your own thumb, bent a
little bit, you'll see that there's not much soft tissue or nerves there. I
hate to think what would have happened if it had gone in under the
thumbnail.....

-riverman