I tried to take a picture of it with my camera phone but it turned out crappy. You cannot see where I pierced the thumbnail. Shortly before Halloween I went over to my sister Debbie’s house. She and her son Derrick were carving pumpkins. I decided to volunteer my cutting skills because the big pumpkin she was carving wasn’t going so well for her.
Since the pumpkin was tough and the knife wasn’t that sharp, I used the point to perforate a circle around the top. The idea being it would be easier to cut the top off by joining the perforations with a second round of deeper cutting. The blade was about eight inches long and an inch and a half wide at the base. At one point on a down stroke I missed the pumpkin and pierced my left thumbnail. I think had I stabbed flesh the blade would have gone deeper or hit bone. I don’t know how deep the point went but the cut in the nail was a quarter inch wide. I suspect the tip went about that deep too. a drop of blood welled up not long after. I cleaned and dressed the wound (and slathered it with Neosporin for the next couple of days).
It would have sucked mightily had if the nail bed had gotten infected. Six weeks have passed since the incident and the cut is growing out. Eventually the thumbnail will grow out and the cut will be gone. But for now it is a visible reminder not to stab my thumbnail while carving a pumpkin (or anything else for that matter).
For the record it did hurt and I did finish cutting the top off the pumpkin so my sister and nephew could scoop it’s guts out.