I have a scar on my left thumb, right where the thumbprint it, from a cut I got chopping cauliflower one evening when my boyfriend was over.  I was 22 years old.  The cut bled like crazy and he thought we should go to a clinic so I could get stitches, but I refused and for the rest of my life I’ve had this scar.

The scar should have been him.  He was nice enough, just a twit really.  I loved his music but he was faithless and drifty, even though I’m sure he was fond of me.  It wasn’t like he could ever settle, he was just a boy.  I was so vexed with him.  I didn’t know then how lucky I was not to be stuck with him longer, not to be married to him or to have children together and be entrapped and attached to him in that way that would have hurt so many other people.

Instead, I got a deep scar on my left thumb.  A sort of shot across the bow, a warning not to take cabbages and cauliflowers too seriously but to pay attention to the knives and what I was doing to myself.

I hated that apartment.  It was soulless, a rabbit warren.  It was new and cheap and a mile from the airport, nearby to NOTHING and there wasn’t even a good place to walk there.  I had my first car, though, so I could drive to my first job: after school daycare for the YMCA, but it was a ghastly time.  I moved to a shared house in the U district that was more interesting, but also disgusting.  It was dirty and the people there stole my food.  I don’t miss those days.

Cabbage is OK though, and I still like cauliflower.  But I’m more careful with knives now.  And people.