we're so f**king tough

so, sitting here with large and multiple burns on my right wrist (after an excruciating shower), i started thinking about all the times i've hurt myself at work.  now, i say hurt cause we eff ourselves up all the time, little cuts and burns and bruises here and there, but there's been a few times i've gotten myself pretty good.

i have cut the tip of my left thumb off twice, and gone 95% of the way through my right thumb.  my left thumb seems to get in my way when i'm knifing.  i never went to culinary school and i was initally trained by knuckleheads so i never learned to keep my fingers out of the way when i'm chopping.  and i've been doing it my way for too long to fix it now (rachel ray cuts onions exactly like i do).  anyway.  the first time i did it i had just gotten my first knife kit (yeah, i bought the whole kit...i was young!) and like two days later i'm chopping some bacon and fuckin wayno insano distracts me and boom.  there was a pile of bacon bits with a part of a thumb in it.  my knives were so new and sharp that it (heavy 9in chef) just went right thru and felt more like an electric shock than a cut.  went to the er (ps drove myself, one handed, in my stick shift mustang) and they spent two hours just cauterizing it so it would stop bleeding.  the next time i did it it was my offset serrated and i just had another cook wrap it with gauze and i gloved up and kept working...it was friday night.  he was being a wuss about it too, and my old servers recall a hilarious scene where j-bones was completely grossed out by all my blood and i was laughing and yelling "come on you pussy!  just wrap that fucker up!  we got tickets!"  my right thumb was a slicer incident...it was an old busted ass slicer and unless you held the tomatoes with your hand the blade would just smoosh them and i did a big ol slice of tomato and almost all the way thru  the tip of my right thumb.  it was barely still attached, kind of flopping around, and i managed to get it kinda back straight and i put a band-aid on, wrapped it with tape, gloved up and kept working.  my right thumb has a scar but my left thumb is all misshapen at the end and the nail thick on one side now.

the worst burn i've ever had was on my foot of all places.  double stack convection ovens.  hotel pan with corned beef in oven bags.  i had to temp one of the briskets so i poked a hole in one of the bags and the juices ran out into the pan.  the other bag was all puffy and as i was pulling the pan out of the lower oven the bag caught on the rack and tipped the pan and sent a pint of lightning hot corned beef juice right into my fucking shoe.  couldn't get my shoe and sock off quick enough.  the burns i have tonight took an hour or so to really blister up but that night right as i pulled my sock off i just sat and watched this fucker blister.  took about twenty seconds.  it looked like a jellybean on top of a golf ball, right on the top of my foot.  i juiced it so i could put my shoe back on and close the kitchen, and later that night i juiced it again and wrapped it with gauze.  then i went to the warped tour the next day.

so basically cooks are fucking hardcore.  we deal with stuff that would send most people home, if not to the hospital, on an everyday basis.  if my wife came in to work with burns on her arms like i got right now all her coworkers would go "oh my god!  what happened to your arm?  are you ok?" but i bet nobody i work with will even notice.  we're too badass.

chefs, i bet each and every one of you has a story like that...let's hear em!