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Shucking my hand

12 June 2008 17 views 4 Comments

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I did something really stupid last night. I attempted to shuck oysters for the first time. Why did I think I could do it? In fact, I didn’t even look up any directions or helpful hinters on how it is done. I was just operating on the assumption that it couldn’t be that hard. After all, I’ve seen it done hundreds of times when Arp and I are sitting at various oyster bars. I also conveniently forgot about the fact that the shuckers at Legal Seafood, for instance, seem to always be wearing gloves. Do you see where all this is going?

So I have an appointment to see the doctor at 11. Hopefully I won’t die of Vibrio infection before that. I have a large puncture wound on my palm. As I was applying pressure to the wound last night, I told Arp that I would rather go through 5 episodes of natural childbirth than recover and deal with this wound.

M asks: How bout ten births?

Me: OK. Ten.

M: 11?

Me: No problem.

M: How bout one hundred! (I think that’s the largest number he knows).

Me: Sure. One Hundred births! I think that might be my limit, though.

After the injury occurred last night, I did some searching on the internet. Seems that oyster shucking actually requires quite a bit of skill, and that even experienced shuckers frequently end up with puncture wounds. That makes the prices I typically pay at oyster bars sound positively cheap. What was I thinking when I bought a dozen of those innocent looking mollusks yesterday?! No more shucking for me. I really hope my hand doesn’t require stitches.

4 Comments »

Summer said:

Ouch!!!! I hope you’ll be OK.

Summer’s last blog post..2 Years And I Still Can’t Type

# 12 June 2008 at 2:03 pm

Arp said:

I tried one in the afternoon and was completely puzzled by the lack of an apparent seam anywhere. On clams you know where the two sides meet but it’s nigh impossible on oysters. I couldn’t figure out at all where one shell stopped and the other one ended. So I went at it anyway, and after a minute the knife slipped and grazed – thankfully – a fingernail. I dropped the oyster and knife and figured I’d leave to the person who I thought knew what she was doing. Trish seemed so confident that I didn’t give it a second thought. That would make two dumb-asses…

# 12 June 2008 at 10:10 pm

Trish (author) said:

I’m alive! The PA told me that it was too late to do stitches. I have no idea about why that might be, but I was relieved regardless. They just tapped me up and gave me some antibiotics. My hand injury gave me an excuse not to mow the lawn yesterday!

# 13 June 2008 at 7:14 am

Susan said:

It’s got to bad to prefer childbirth…….It’s been awhile, but Legal Seafood wasn’t it right down from No Name?

Anyway…I think I fixed Sunstruck if you want to give a look: This is the URL you should get when it plays: http://www.sunstruckradio.com/shows/sunstruckradio-v1e2.mp3

The first words are…Did you ever wonder about moving…..

Let me know if you have further problems.
Thanks very much, Susan

Susan’s last blog post..Have you heard anything so cool?

# 13 June 2008 at 2:37 pm