Paper Cutters are Dangerous Machines

January has flown by. I arrived back in Guatemala with smiles and a sense of homecoming after spending a wonderful Christmas vacation with friends and family in the States. Second semester of school started back without problems and has passed more quickly than I could have imagined, especially considering I haven't done anything extraordinary on the weekends or during the week. This weekend (from Friday to today) however, has provided many interesting stories. And it is actually those events that have prompted me to finally write a new post on my blog.

Friday, about 12:30pm, there I was in the new media center of our school, supervising some research by my Chemistry class for a project I had just assigned them, when I remembered I hadn't yet finished cutting out some game pieces for an activity in my last class of the day. My chemistry class is fairly well behaved and stay on task well, so I left them to their independent research and went to cut some paper for my game. Well, if you haven't already put together the last sentence and this post's title, I had some technical difficulties with the paper cutter. In order to save you gruesome details, I'll just leave it at this: during my last swipe with the blade, I accidentally put a finger in the wrong place and effectively "circumcised my thumb" (as one student later put it). Fortunately, many other teachers were in the staff lounge, eating lunch and were able to assist me in cleaning and bandaging my wound, saving the piece of thumb (skin and fingernail) I cut off, and showing the entire rest of the school my detached piece of thumb in a plastic bag.

Well, as interesting as that must have been for all the elementary and high school classes (to see my piece of thumb in a plastic sandwich bag, leaving the rest to imagination), it must have been even better to see the actual person who is so good at cutting with the paper cutter. I know this because soon after the incident I went outside to serve my lunch duty, and at once the first and second grade teachers told their students, "there she is, Ms. Johnson, the science teacher." I was swarmed(they literally RAN over to me) by 20 little 1st and 2nd graders who wanted to see for themselves. Being the responsible teacher that I am, I took the opportunity to remind our impressionable young students the importance of safety when handling sharp objects:

me--"And what can we learn from this?"
young girl (yelling)--"Don't run with scissors in your hand, and carry them like this!"
me--"Exactly, now go back to class, show and tell is over."

When finished healing, I have a feeling my poor thumb will never again have the same shape as the other hand's thumb. At least the defective thumb is on the same hand that already has a deformed finger!