It happened as I was preparing a dish to serve our dear out-of-town guests who were coming to visit us in order to pretend to watch the Super Bowl together. As are most things that happen in our household, it was originally inspired by Blaine. He was quite a sports guy, a rolling encyclopedia of stats and insights, if you will. And deeply into anything fun. If something hadn’t been fun, it would be after Blaine got involved. Especially with Ric joining in.

We would have costumes, door prizes, make outlandish bets and so on. But even when there was sports knowledge among us, it was really a lot more about the food and socializing. We had food themes, sometimes based on the cuisines of the home towns of the teams playing, sometimes not. Someday I’ll have to dig out the old photos, from the pre-digital days and revisit our Super Bowl history to share with all. 

But not today. Because the fact that it was Super Bowl Sunday was just a temporal setting and not the topic here at all.

We had gone clamming the night before, and planned to serve fresh fried razor clams for dinner, a delicacy if I ever did taste one. We went down to the beach a couple of hours before low tide, to chase it out, as one does. But a sneaker wave got me after only 40 minutes or so, bathing my pants up to my waist and filling my rubber boots with icy cold water (and nearly carrying me out to sea in the bargain). Do not, I repeat, do not ever turn your back on the North Beach ocean.

Ric gamely stayed at it for a couple more hours, but didn’t quite get his limit, and the ones he got were smaller than usual. When I assessed the catch, after Ric meticulously cleaned them, I realized it was just not enough to be the heart of a meal to feed four hungry people. Especially when you have been telling them how delicious and utterly satisfying this meal of clammy delicacies is going to be. 

So I decided to pivot, use the clams to make a dip for an appetizer, and make tandoori chicken as the main dish. Yes, I realize that’s a world and continent away from razor clams, but I really like the recipe I got off the internet and the wonderful large container of garam marsala I ordered from amazon.com when there was none to be had in all of Grays Harbor County.

The only part of making tandoori chicken I dislike is tearing the skin off the flesh of the drumsticks. It’s all well and good until you get to the bottom of the bone, at the joint, where the skin hangs on for dear life (yes, that’s an inappropriate word in the circumstance of dead poultry, I realize). I have yet to figure out a good technique for that part, but I bet there are hundreds of you tube videos showing a range of methods if only I had the patience to watch instructional you tube videos, which I don’t because the people always talk way too much for my preferred learning style.

I somehow managed to pretty much slash and trash most of the skin from the flesh, in my own ugly clumsy ineffective way. The next step is to make little slashes in the meat so the marinade can soak in and add wonderful flavor. 

This is where I should reveal that Ric cannot bear to watch me wield a knife. He thinks I do it wrong and dangerously. I confess I may not know what I’m doing, but I compensate by using the wrong knife for every situation and always choose one that is very dull and serrated. My working theory is that the knife choice should be determined by the size of my hand and grasp, not the intention of the knife, and that if it’s dull I won’t cut myself as deep and the friction of the serrations will limit the length of the slash I accidentally inflict on myself.

So as I started scoring the Super Bowl chicken flesh, I suddenly get this thought that it would be really horrible to slash myself to the bone way out here so far from medical care and me still not having a doctor and all, and that if I had uncontrollable bleeding, we would have to rush out the door and find an ER in a distant town and our guests aren’t here yet, so should we just leave the door unlocked and hope they will just come on in and when they see the blood they will figure out what happened and patiently wait until we get back and will they be able to operate all three remote controls so they can turn on the game if we don’t get back by 3:30 but it probably doesn’t matter because we don’t really watch the game anyway, and will their cell phones even work here, so maybe we should take time to leave a note even if I am bleeding profusely? At each turn I decided there were no good solutions so slicing myself was not in the realm of things that could be recovered from and would surely ruin a really fun day.

But there were so many possible scenarios to play out in my head that I kind of lost my concentration and before you know it, I felt a searing burning pain and I looked down and saw I had sliced across my thumb really deep, including through the thumbnail, and blood was oozing steadily down my opposable digit. But since I had already decided that was something that couldn’t possible be tolerated, like I had rehearsed the scene until it became muscle memory, I plunged my hand under the cold faucet, ripped off a paper towel and wrapped a tight tourniquet around my thumb, pressed the wound as tightly as I could, and literally willed myself to stop hurting and bleeding. I mean, my mind became a force of nature, with the power of the Pacific Ocean behind it, and I just decided the pain and bleeding had to stop. Three paper towels in, I braved a peek at it and saw that it was working. I had literally healed myself. 

There’s only one logical explanation. Through a near amputation, I have become a miracle worker. A faith healer. With magical powers. Shaman potential maybe. No wonder I haven’t been able to find a doctor here. The universe has been trying to speak to me, telling me I don’t need no stinkin doctor. Using my magical powers, I’ll just cure myself!! Have I had this power all along, I wonder, or was it brought on by the desperation of a near dismemberment? What else can I do I don’t yet know about? Do I dare run more tests? 

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Our guests arrived, we drank lemon drops in Blaine’s honor, kind of had the game on in the background (what a snore-fest and have they just given up on making good commercials!?!?), and had a wonderful visit. Followed  by a viewing of Springsteen on Broadway, which is just the best thing ever, OMG I love Bruce!!! 

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A day later, I have no pain in my thumb, the flesh beneath the nail has reconnected and I am reveling in my new found power, pondering all the ways I can use it for good. Do you need any bleeding staunched? Virus exorcised? Maybe my miracle abilities will grow and I can expand my service to cure the afflicted of the whole North Beach region.

Then I bet nobody will dare honk at me for driving within the speed limit on the roads here.