This Fourth of July was good for me despite the fact that I ended it in an emergency room having my hand stitched up and missing the fireworks.

So this is how it all started: we were having a small party, only the closest friends invited, on our roof (we are technically ot allowed to go there, but we do it anyway), and that was when my roommate got aggravated with her ex (who was also invited for reasons unknown to me), and smashed her wine glass against the wall of a roof entrance.

We didn’t hear the whole argument, and all of us just stared at them in shock, when I noticed that I am bleeding. It turned that a huge piece of shattered glass had bounced of the wall and slashed the skin on my hand. I went down to treat the cut and while rinsing it I was even more surpised to see a stomach turning gash on the top of my left hand, with blood streaming down from it and quickly forming a puddle under the sink.  My roommate who walked into the bathroom a moment after me, was even more horrified and nearly passed out when she saw all the blood and flesh.

We rushed to the ER where I was congratulated by the surgeon on the fact that the glass had barely missed my tendons. So there was a sort of silverlining in the dark cloud of my injury (see, having it had jeopardized the trip to the beach that we had planned for Sunday). Another good thing was that I have learned some new things, and it never hurts to learn something new, right?

Things I’ve learned:

-The fastest and easiest way to clean blood stains from hard surfaces is to pour peroxide over it and then wipe it off with a paper towel (wikihow doesn’t teach you that!).

-People in Mississippi are not all overweight racists (watching the episode of Bravo’s  What Would You Do? while waiting to be seen doctor in the ER’s waiting area).

-If you ever find yourself in an emergency room and are asked if you have had a #%$& (something that makes absolutely no sense to you) done, your immediate response should be “yes”. Because if you say no, or even appear hesitant you will be vaccinated on the spot to prevent diseases that you didn’t even know exist.

-The best way to ignore a person in pain is to pretend that this person is not there (nurses in the ER to a homeles woman with a bad burn on her leg waiting to be treated by a doctor). I mean, you probably should ignore someone who smells bad and yells obscenities at you, but, am I wrong to judge them for not trying to understand that all her stunts were just an attempt to get the attention and care that she obviously doesn’t get but needs so desperately? And are they really that busy looking mad, that they can’t spare a minute to make a small talk with someone, or at least just look and smile and the person? Well… I’m sure all of it is more complicated than it looks…

-Tullie loves blood. But it gives her mad diarrhea.