What’s In a Name? Scar Tissue, Apparently.
Posted by Moose on September 25th, 2008. Filed under: Photos.To give you the true meaning of Moose in the Kitchen, the hastily selected name for this blog, I would have to put my hands through my computer screen, flipping them like a blind porpoise flaps its fins as you warily inspect them, wondering how they came out of your computer and what they’re doing in your living room. Since I’m fairly sure computers don’t work that way (YET), and the time space continuum tends to forbid such things, kind of like gravity forbids me from flying about the room pelting my coworkers with small boxes of staples, I will just have to take pictures of my hands instead.
Except I don’t have my camera.
So now I’m going to ask you to IMAGINE my hands, imagine hands covered in scar tissue – not COMPLETELY covered, mind, but just covered enough so you think, “Wow, that girl needs a leash or a keeper or at least a six-foot-deep tub of neosporin.” On the top of my left hand is a long, straight scar from Boat Wars, a seventh grade science class tradition where we fashioned boats from whatever struck our fancy, dumped them in the school swimming pool, and folded in our adolescent limbs to see whose boat would stay afloat the longest. My partner and I shellacked the living hell out of a big cardboard box, a wholly unsophisticated strategy that scraped us a triumphant second place. My scar originated approximately three minutes later, when a sharp corner of the soggy shellacked mess dug into my hand as we pulled it out of the pool.
Other scars include two small silver dots on the top of my left knuckles, a white twisting lump where my hand met a glass light fixture in an abrupt fashion, and the lines on my palm which are not scars so much as they are indicators that I will bear seventeen children or that I should have died last Tuesday.
Oddly enough, the one scar on my hands that actually did come from the kitchen, after misplaced confidence in my knife skills led me to attempt to chop a slippery onion way too fast, has faded so that I can’t even see it any more. WELL, NEVER MIND THEN.
Answering Bethany’s question: What does the name of your blog mean, anyway? requires me to tell you that, like a bull in a china shop, I am a moose in the kitchen. Cloying smoke pours out of ovens when I’m in the vicinity, and I once sent an entire dorm of girls trooping out into the chill air of a New York January because I set off the fire alarm at 2 a.m. by burning my Rice-a-Roni. Plus, enough scars to make a fiesty rodeo clown proud. Of course, since I started this blog, I’ve taught myself to cook - rather successfully, if I may be so immodest - and the name has become a blatant and unrepenting lie. Except for this:
Which is what happens when you lean over your dish rack to grab a towel and rake your arm down the grasping tines of a greedy fork. That fork has since been dubbed Audrey Jr., after the cannibalistic houseplant from Little Shop of Horrors. And, yes. I washed off the blood before eating my macaroni and cheese.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I feel so much better having that little mystery cleared up. Thanks!
If it makes you feel better, I have a similar map of scars on my feet, hands, head, arms…I like to say I’m spatially challenged.
September 25th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
You are my hero! A fork injury! On the SHOULDER! Bravo!
September 25th, 2008 at 3:21 pm
oh my hell that looks painful!
September 25th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Ouch! That definitely looks painful. I am equally clumsy in the kitchen. I suffered a cut while opening an orange. A fruit mauled me!
September 25th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
That’s a great looking scrape! Secondly only to my close friend whose stomach rubbed against the plastic railing during a roller derby bout, leaving a perfectly formed heart-shaped scrape next to her hip bone.
September 25th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Ouchy ouchy ouchy!!!!
If it helps, you’re not the only one out there who needs (needed) to work on cooking skills in dorm. My sisters roommate was not aware, originally, that “boil a hotdog for 3 minutes” as cooking instructions involved…water. THAT was fun, apparently.
September 25th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
We need to have an adult Boat Wars. Pronto!!
September 25th, 2008 at 7:39 pm
Ouch OUCH!
I, too, am quiet a graceful unit in the kitchen. But hey, all the burns have removed a good portion of my arm hair! BONUS!
September 25th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
I just love how you write.
September 26th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I like it. My husband will like it. I can cook and I like to cook–I just can’t do it witout injuring myself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve burned the backs of my hands on the top coil of the oven. Will I ever learn to wear a full oven mitt instead of just using a towel? Probably not.
September 26th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Aha! I always wondered about the blog title.
Also, I’m all for grown-up Boat Wars. I’m thinking they should incorporate wine in some way.
September 26th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I’m a klutz too, hence the WIDE OPEN floor plan. Less corners to impale myself on.
I cannot believe that a fork did that to you. I’m guessing the fork suffered too?
September 26th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
That was a quite entertaining post about how the name of your blog came about
Hope your arm doesn’t hurt anymore…
September 27th, 2008 at 9:45 am
My hands are COVERED in cooking scars. And by cooking I mean making toast. Because I have injured myself multiple times making toast.
September 28th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
That is a totally bitchin’ looking scrape.
I’ve got plenty of my own little scars and crap from cooking misadventures. I’ve read that professional chefs are often covered in scars as well.
September 29th, 2008 at 10:46 am
I still have a scar on the top of my left hand from a battle I lost with a toaster oven in middle school.
Kitchen klutzes, UNITE.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am
OW!! That looks painful. I am notorious for slicing into my finger whilst attempting to cut cheese (heh. No, not THAT kind of cutting the cheese. Excuse me, I am a 12-year-old boy, apparently). Anyway, my husband no longer lets me near the knives when I’ve been drinking.
October 7th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
oooo I want that tshirt! (sorry about the fork scrape, but I LOVE the color of that tshirt!)
December 13th, 2008 at 10:16 am
I was one of those girls sent out of the dorm (and our suite) as a result of your rice-a-roni and no worries my dear, we LOVED those moments because there is nothing quite hotter than a ton of NYC firefighters responding in the middle of the night to a women’s college dorm
Ohhhhhh, the memories!