The Deadly Art of Dish Washing.

Thursday 21 June 2007...

Mother's everywhere worry about their children being out late at night. What do they get up to? Are they being safe? Will they make the right choices and stay out of trouble? Yet not a single concern is given, in fact, mothers often encourage, their children to participate in the deadly art of dish washing.

Yes, dish washing. After traveling, by road, more than half way across a country that contains more perils than a Batman movie, dish washing, the day after my return, is what floors me (quite literally). It is my number two most serious accident, in my life, right after breaking a leg skateboarding. Let me explain.

I was washing the dishes, around about midday. I had the dish cloth inside a glass, wiping around the inner rim when a piece of the glasses side breaks off. My right hand continued to turn in the glass, into the leading edge of the break, slicing deeply into the lower back of my thumb. Shi...ouch!

As you can imagine, blood starts pouring out. I'm thinking 'this isn't good', dropped the rest of the glass into the water, grabbed the dish cloth, covered the wound and applied pressure. Now what?

At that moment I hear my partner pull into the drive way, returning home from work. A minute or two later she walks into the dining area, sees me holding the dish cloth on my hand, over the sink and asks "are you okay?"

"No, I just sliced my hand open on a glass."

She rushes to get our first aid kit as my head starts to spin. Coming back, my partner has time to move me away from the sink to the serving bench, take away the dish cloth and bandage the wound (which appears to have stopped bleeding from what I saw). All the while my head is spinning and I'm trying to stay upright.

I've never fainted before. Not even when I broke my leg. I have a theory. When I broke my leg the pain was so great that my brain couldn't do anything but think 'oh my god that hurts, oh my god that hurts, did I mention that hurts?' etc. When I sliced my hand open, whilst the initial cut hurt, after that, there wasn't really any unbearable pain just blood pouring out where it shouldn't. Therefore, my brain had time to think, 'this looks really serious - if I tune out and live in denial maybe it will go away?'

I guess my partner helped me down to the kitchen floor, where I woke up, what I imagine to be seconds later, lying down. She had gone off to quickly lock up the house and phone the doctor. My head was still spinning but lying on the kitchen floor was really uncomfortable and probably very worrying. I got up walked myself into the lounge and flopped onto a couch.

By the time the doctor had been phoned, my head was starting to level out again and I was feeling a little better. From this point on I was able to walk to the car and into the doctors surgery where I had five stitches put in and a fairly impressive looking bandage applied to cover the damage. Afterwards my partner and I went out to lunch as planned.

As I'm writing this it is nearly two days after the accident. I still have my bandage on. It comes off this afternoon. In eight days the stitches will be removed. I'm okay really. Don't worry too much. I've kept the hand elevated and haven't really experienced much pain at all.

However, the trauma I experienced whilst washing dishes has scared me for life. I don't think I'll be able to go near a kitchen sink or wash another dish ever again. The memories of that fateful day are just too much to bare. Washing dishes is far too dangerous and life threatening... well that's my story anyway. Not that anyone believes me.

My partner bought one of those 'mop on a stick' type dish washing utensils so I would never have to stick my hand into a glass to clean it again. I guess she believes in the idea of 'if you fall off a horse you've just gotta dust yourself off and get right back up there and ride it again'.

Skateboard Trick Tips: Two Ways to Ollie North (Ollie One foot)

You have to be quick to see my Ollie Norths! Ollie One Foots, otherwise known as the Ollie North, is one of those skateboard tricks you learn and then tend not to do very much as more interesting trick challenges grab your attention. However it does look really cool if you learn how to kick your front foot well past the nose of your skateboard. Still shot from Braille Skateboarding's Ollie North tutorial. I was inspired to make my video below, showing two different techniques to achieve a successful Ollie One Foot, when I not only saw that Braille Skateboarding's Tutorial used a different method to the one I had learned but also, when I looked at various other video tutorials, I discovered yet another technique, with no one using the method I had originally learned. Braille's method is to simply Ollie and drag your front foot past the front of your board. The second method I came across in several video tutorials is to Ollie, drag your front foot and tap your

How to Transfer Any Line Art to Your Griptape - Easy Skateboard Griptape Art Tutorial

Dog Star Griptape Art by TET Griptape art is once again gaining popularity amongst modern skateboarders. For those of us who have tried to create our own griptape art, using paint pens, you'll know reproducing your design onto the grip, without making any mistakes is incredibly challenging. Mostly because you just have to go for it and draw the design freehand, with paint pens, directly onto the griptape. You can make the odd mistake here or there but if you get the proportions of the design completely wrong, it can be very difficult to fix. Often you just have to live with the mistake. To address the problem I've come up with an easy way anyone can transfer a line art design to their griptape, removing almost all the anxiety of getting the proportions wrong. In fact, you could do this with any line art design, even if you have no drawing skill at all. Watch the video below to see my technique in action and/or skip past the video where I highlight the basic steps to get your de

Review: FP Footwear FINO Skate Shoes

FP Footwear FINO Skate Shoes I first saw FP's FINO skate shoes in a video by YouTube channel, Braille Skateboarding, titled, THE FIRST EVER NON NEWTONIAN FLUID SKATE SHOES!? As someone whose feet hurt and bruise relatively easily just from the basic tricks of skateboarding (Ollies, Pop Shuv-its etc.) the 90% absorption of impact energy selling point seemed like an ideal solution for minimizing my injuries. A day later I placed an order through FP's website . Ordinarily I wouldn't mention Customer Service but I can't let the lack of communication on my order slide. FP's website says to expect delivery within 7-14 days of your order. After close to two weeks, my order was still marked as being processed. I sent an email asking for any kind of update, to no response. A day or two later my order was marked as completed but still no signs of shoes in my mail? About two weeks later (just over a full month of placing my order) the shoes arrived. I'm sur

Can You Learn Skateboarding Basics on a Cheap Skateboard?

$20, Mambo 31" x 8", Department Store Skateboard. Over the years I've watched many high profile YouTube skateboarders repeatedly create videos where they purchase a cheap, department store skateboard, ride it like they would their regular professional skateboard, until it breaks (usually within an hour or so), and claim that as a reason for steering clear of these products. Inadvertently what they're doing is creating less demand for cheap skateboards, meaning it's less likely department stores will stock them, resulting in no easy way for first time skaters to 'test the waters' to see if skating is really for them. Even worse, parents looking to get their children into a new sport, may not even see skateboarding as an option as they browse through the department store sports section. At the time of writing, Australian department stores have shelves filled with many different brands of scooters, alongside a small shelf or two of skateboards (and

Movie Review: Air (2023) Amazon Prime No Spoilers

I imagine the general story of how the world's greatest basketballer, Michael Jordan, was signed to Nike doesn't sound all that compelling on a surface level. From his point of view it was a few meetings and making the right choice of which shoe company to sign with. However Air fleshes the story out by finding the key players at Nike and showing the behind the scenes drama that enabled them to take a risk on, what was then an exciting, up and coming rookie, who already had a choice of two leading shoe companies to sign with. Matt Damon plays Sonny Vaccaro, the visionary at Nike who saw the future potential of Michael Jordan as a sure thing. He knew Michael wasn't just a great basket ball player but had to find a way to convince his CEO, Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), to make a winning pitch to the Jordan family, and particularly Jordan's mother (Viola Davis), that Nike had their son's best interests at heart. From what I understand both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon did

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 (2023) No Spoilers

If you've enjoyed Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 1 and Volume 2 then Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 will not disappoint. I would almost go so far as to call it the best in the series... except seeing the first movie for the first time is still one of my best memories of the MCU. While it's not essential to the story if you didn't see the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special on Disney+ it does kind of lead into and set up where the Guardians are at in Volume 3 quite nicely. In this installment Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is still not coping with the loss of his timeline's Gamora (Zoe Saldada) when suddenly the team is attacked leaving Rocket (Bradley Cooper) in a very bad way. From then on it's a race to save Rocket as we learn quite a bit about his origin in the process. This movie is slightly darker than the first two and, if you're concerned about the animal cruelty that is causing some people to not want to see the film again, keep in mind, it's j

How I Lost Rock-to-Fakies (and Tried to Get Them Back) - A Skateboard Story

TET, Rock-to-Fakie attempt No# 43 (maybe?) Rock-to-Fakies, the act of riding your skateboard up a ramp, hanging half your board over the lip, then lifting your board back into the ramp, and riding out backwards, is one of the most basic ramp tricks. Bored Monkey Classic Popsicle Skateboard . See more deck shapes . Yet I can't do them anymore. At one time I could, without giving it any thought - even on my home 5' high mini ramp with an extra foot of vert extension added to the top of the transition. But as my skating got less, and skateboard spots with ramps diminished through the mid to late 1990s, I got out of practice. I did have a two foot tall, driveway mini, quarter pipe (with coping) I used to practice my mini ramp tricks on. Then one fateful day (I say that because this is scarred into my brain) I tried a rock-to-fakie and the tail of my skateboard dug into the pave stones at the base of the ramp as I came down, throwing me, hard, back into the ground

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog