Things in Your Refrigerator that Fail Entirely to End Your Pain.

About two months ago, I lost all the skin on my fingertips. If you were to ask me how or why this happened, I would look blankly at you for a few moments, be surprised that you were surprised, and assume that you didn't know me at all. The doctors at the HMO have no idea what caused this condition, nor do they have any idea how to treat it. They mumble and they scratch their heads, and without any real idea of what they're saying, they explain that it's just another facet of the Unbearable State of Being Dan, and that I should just go home and try to relax.

Skin missing from fingertips and the causes thereof, however, are not the subject of this post. This post is designed entirely to warn an unsuspecting populace that if skin has gone missing from your fingertips, and if you're making fajitas for dinner, the last thing in the world you want to do is chop jalapeños with your bare hands.
Without going into too much detail, I'll set the stage by saying that not long ago at all, I found myself whimpering in my chair with fingertips swollen to the size of Super Balls bearing a color you normally don't see on a person unless they've been cut open, and feeling pain that would make even the most committed masochist scream out the safe-word because things had obviously gone too far.

My brain kicked in after a while, which it will do when there's no other option, and reminded me that the chemical in peppers that causes the burning sensation is an oil, so to wash it away I would need an alkaline. With childhood memories of turning brown pennies into shiny copper pennies, I ran to the refrigerator in search of ketchup. There was no ketchup. Milk is also an alkaline. There was no milk. There actually wasn't much of anything in the refrigerator. There was beer, of course, and alcohol would easily break up an oil, but I certainly wasn't willing to waste a perfectly good beer just to end some searing, paralyzing pain. I considered soy sauce only briefly, then I spotted the pickle jar. I figured pickle juice had to be mostly vinegar, and vinegar is an alkaline. With more effort than I can express with just words (actually, if you have a moment, with more effort than I can express with just words, facial expressions, interpretative dance, or sock puppets), I twisted the lid off the pickle jar and plunged my fingers inside.

I would love to tell you that the pickle juice did the trick, but I am Dan, after all, and things are never that easy. The pickle juice intensified the pain and swelling tenfold. Out of clever ideas, unable to think further through the pain, and (I'm fairly certain) being mocked by the dog, I took the last option available to me. I decided to do what Cal Drier would do. I decided to quit being a sissy and muscle through the situation. Nothing lasts forever, and I am a Drier, damn it. It takes a lot more than jalapeños and missing fingertips to keep a Drier down.
I took a picture of my hand with my camera-phone. Then I bit down on the remote control and I sat on my chair to take the pain like a man.

That's the last thing I remember.

I've since regained consciousness, obviously, and seeing as how I'm typing, you've got a good indication that the condition of my fingertips has improved, so I'll skip the wind-down of the story and come to the point--the new point. The new point of this post is the camera-phone is the greatest invention in the history of man. No one is going to believe this story, as no one believes any of the stories I tell, but I'll show them the picture of my hand like I showed them the camera-phone video of the Golden Queen Pothos pounding on my desk, and they'll have no choice but to acknowledge that the story is—at least in part—the Bible truth.

Amen.