Caleb picked at his stitches, trying to chase away the itchiness by scratching only the outer edges of raw, swollen flesh.  That never works for more than three seconds.  The palm of his hand was puffy and a bit tight, almost hard right at the wound.  Ugly black nylon stitches jutted angrily out of his hand like stiff whiskers of a scurvy pirate. 

   What a dull turn this story had taken.  He swallowed another antibiotic pill with the remains of his glass of warm, flat Sprite, shoveled some Dorito crumbs into his mouth, and settled back into the couch for some channel surfing.

   Last week his Mom had attended a Pampered Chef party.  She was only gone for a few hours, but that was long enough to leave the family at home dependent on pizza delivery for dinner.  Afterwards he had overheard her describing to Dad all of the elaborate sales tactics used by the demonstrator.  Together they had ridiculed the way people try to frighten each other into making unnecessary purchases.  If you don’t order this, something terrible will surely happen.  If you don’t order that, you will be wasting your time using traditional cooking methods.  If you don’t host a party, you may as well resign yourself to financial destruction, etc, etc.

   In particular, Mom had commented on the strong push being heaved behind a can opener that was supposed to leave smooth edges on your cans and lids.  The importance of such a product had completely eluded his shopper-savvy mother, despite the dramatic finger-swiping demonstrations at the party. 

   “It’s not like they’re walking on red hot coals or a pile of broken glass!”  Caleb’s parents had chortled together like playground bullies.

   “Sheep,” they were fond of muttering in such conversations, adult eyes rolling in cool condescension.

   Sitting on the couch now, watching Nickelodeon reruns and feasting on remnants of pantry junk food instead of skateboarding with his friends, Caleb reflected on the cruel sense of humor being displayed by the universe. 

   Exactly one day after the Pampered Chef party, his Mom had spent an entire afternoon in the kitchen making Hello Dolly cookie bars.  A gathering of culinary friends always put her in the mood to whip up something yummy and old fashioned.  For this recipe she needed lots of special ingredients, including a can of sweetened, condensed milk, which she had opened with her old, hand crank steel can opener. 

   This would become a fated decision.

   She surely would have disposed of the can and its now free hanging, rough edged lid in the trash can.  Nothing unusual about this, of course, but it’s funny how the otherwise mundane details of a fated event become overly sharp and focused in retrospect.

   Like always, at the end of the evening Caleb’s job was to take the kitchen trash to the blue bin outside.  He often needed prodding, and this night was no exception.  Mom was finishing up the day’s dishes, hands submerged almost up to her elbows in sudsy water, when she called him into the kitchen.

   He dragged himself stubbornly away from the computer and limped like Frankenstein’s monster into the kitchen.

   Before tending to the garbage, he peeled away one more warm, gooey Hello Dolly from the glass pan.  (Also not a Pampered Chef product, it bears mentioning.)  Still washing dishes, Mom playfully scolded him for this theft and demanded a kiss on her cheek as payment.  He leaned in and sort of kissed her limply, sort of groaned at the silliness, and swallowed the sweet treat whole.

   Then he turned his attention to the trash can.

   It glowed with strange color, almost pulsing, an eery light of doom and warning.

   He did his best to shake off the bad feeling, silently wondering if it’s true that he watches too many scary movies.

   Caleb took three steps to the lidded silver trash can and felt doom course cold and fast through his veins.  He removed the lid, gathered up the edges of the plastic liner, and heaved it out of the can.  Everything seemed to be normal so he just let the stinky burden of garbage spin in the air, thereby twisting the bag shut and earnign him one more scolding from Mom.

   “That stinks!  Stop playing with that and get it outside!”  Despite the barking words, she smiled.

    Rolling his eyes just as he had learned from his parents, the teenaged boy slumped his way out of the kitchen and into the night.  He made his way towards the blue trash bin where his plastic delivery was destined to land.  Upon lifting it to drop it, something swiped his opposite hand sharp and swift.

   “OUUWWWCH!!!  What the…?!”  He dropped the vanilla-scented trash bag, and the contents spilled out chaotically onto the brick pathway.  He strained in the dark to see what had happened.  The palm of his hand felt an incredible stinging pain immediately, and in the moonlight he could see that a long, curved line of blood was beginning to seep through his white flesh.

   He howled and screamed for his Mom, who was already running outside, drying her hands on a cotton tea towel.  “Caleb, oh my God, what happened?”

   “Something cut me!  I’m bleeding!”

   “Let me see, are you alright?”  She grabbed his forearm and inspected his hand with a mix of a mother’s love and a physician’s expertise.  “What cut you?  You’re bleeding!”

    More eye rolling.

   She was about to lead her son, already three inches taller than her at the age of fourteen, back into the house for first aid attention and possibly a hand transplant right there in the dining room.  But something caught her eye and froze her in her steps.

   A gleaming disk of steel had been kicked free from the garbage pile and now shimmered in the silver light and spun its way to a resting spot on the brick path before them.  Cicadas and owls stopped their night songs to listen to the metallic noise.

   It was the lid from her sweetened condensed milk.  All color drained from her face as the string of relevant events flashed in her mind like a taunting slideshow of maternal failure.  I didn’t buy the smooth edge can opener.  I made fun of the woman for trying to entice me.  I baked that dessert with pride, not love.  I scold my son too much.  My thighs are touching.  Now Caleb will need stitches and maybe a hand transplant because of me.  Am I out of Scentsy?  He’s gonna need a tetanus shot for sure.

   “Mom!  This really hurts!”  Her son’s panicky voice snapped her out of the downward spiraling reverie, and she  sprinted to action.

   The rest of the night had been spent at the emergency room, evaluating and cleaning the wound, getting a tetanus shot, and enduring stitches from a nurse who clearly did not want to be at work.  Caleb was prescribed antibiotics and sent home with instructions to keep his hand clean, leave the stitches alone, and return in a week for further evaluation.  

   So far a transplant was not in order.  But as he fumbled through getting himself ready for bed that night, Caleb had overheard his mother placing a telephone order for a Pampered Chef smooth edge can opener.

   She had never been a woman to make the same mistake twice.

   I wonder what’s on HBO today.

   

   I am an admitted sucker for neatly packaged, pre-organized, easily translatable remnants of knowledge that some people might call gimmicks.  Especially if they rhyme.  Not that full bodies of information or complete works of literature are lost on me; I just have a subterranean appetite for smaller doses of wisdom that can be absorbed and digested in a flash.  

   Same goes for quotes, especially when they are credited to people who have already earned my admiration. Like Albert Einstein.  I do try to make note people who have been quoted and seem worth a revisit then try to measure their full spectrum of opinion or experience against sturdier belief systems already in place.

   Why such a sucker?  Because life gets busy, baby, and my mind gets distracted.  And I cannot afford to waste even a little bit of my limited brain power by NOT learning something or motivating myself to do something.  I also get bored easily in my relative isolation, so shaking things up with fresh perspectives and newer incarnations of the same good stuff just does my soul a favor.

   My love affair with gimmicks started young.  I would never have learned where is east and where is west without once being taught that you EAT with your EAST hand (assuming you are right handed, I suppose).  And the notes on a treble clef?  The spaces are, from the bottom, F–A–C–E and, for the lines, Every Good Boy Does Fine.  (Or Fart, depending on whether my piano teacher was within earshot.)

  For a more recent example, cardio.  There will always be running and elliptical machines and jump ropes and trampolines, but I saw on Pinterest the neatest little poster outlining a 20-minute cardio routine I just had to try.  My fancy was tickled.  Anything can be endured for twenty minutes, right?  And this workout could be done in a hotel room sans equipment, sans judgmental audience, and sans push ups, which are from the devil.

    For the record, I did actually try this both yesterday and today.  Well, I completed almost two thirds of this both times, repeating the cycle not quite thrice.  It is more difficult in the flesh than it is on the computer screen, but that’s a good thing, right?  It got my heart pumping wildly in a very short period of time, and I didn’t have to leave the security and privacy of my hotel room.  I jumped immediately into the shower and called it a day.

   Another excellent find is always anything that will boil down my thoughts and get me to focus.  Are you like me, prone to melancholy over old hurts or losses, unsolvable problems, or possible future catastrophes?  That stuff is paralyzing, man.  And wasteful of our abundance in the present moment.  Shake it off and admit what you’re doing to yourself.

   

   With regard to actual literature, the sources of inspiration are endless.  I have my online reading lists and my friends’ lists; my sister’s friend Julia who is also now my friend, who works as a literary publicist and feeds me titles like they were solid gold sunflower kernels; and my fellow book clubbers.  (Our Oklahoma book club has grown from four to eighteen women, all filled with excellent ideas about what to devour next)  Feeding off of the recommendations of trustworthy, vastly interesting women has become a beloved source of inspiration for me.  Yes, some of this is a bit gimmicky, but who cares?  Not me.

   This week at the zoo I saw a series of small, wooden signs bearing the same quote over and over again, and the message has been echoing in my heart in a very genuine, movement-begging way.  Here it is paraphrased, because I failed to snap a photo and I cannot find it on the internet:

-Unknown

   I believe the context there was animal conservancy, but of course we can choose to apply it at will to any situation where action is needed.  Even though the delivery was gimmicky (about two dozen matching wooden signs strewn along a landscaped pathway), the effect is real.

   I guess all I’m saying today is that if you are drawn to appetizers of knowledge now and then, don’t feel guilty about it; let it fuel you!  And let it prompt a healthy intellectual menu.  Use the thinky calories and nutrients you scrape up from all over this beautiful world to improve your life and deepen and enrich your experiences.  As long as gimmicky snippets are only part of your nourishment, not the whole of what you ingest, I bet you’re okay.   You have nothing to regret in surfing and collecting and reading and observing.