Too Late For Stitches

So I sliced my finger open at the Hollywood Bowl while waiting for Dolly Parton to come on stage to do the second half of her incredible concert. I was attempting to use a bottle opener to pry a bottlecap off of a large Stella Artois. The cap took a layer of glass with it and my finger met this jagged terminus in a lusty embrace.

I moseyed on down to the First Aid Center beneath the Bowl. A drunken older female fan who could never have gotten away with the length of her skirt anywhere else in the world was up on a table while a nice EMT dabbed her bleeding knee with Hydrogen peroxide. Her daughter paced outside the room on a cell phone in an even smaller outfit. One too young, one too old for their respective skirts.

My EMT was a burly guy who gently daubed at the cut, told me I should go to an Urgent Care facility for stitches, and then told me that HE wouldn't go if the same thing happened to him. So I let him wrap the cut and I headed back up to my seat.

Melody was waiting, worried.

Dolly was transcendent, playing about 10 different instruments, cracking jokes left and right, and pouring her heart out in song.

Cut to a couple of days later and I begin to be convinced that there is still glass in the cut. My doctor reassured me that there was not. But when I asked if I needed stitches, she said, "Oh no, it's too late for stitches."

This statement has been bouncing around in my brain ever since I heard it. It seems apropos in all areas of my life. I am healing. I ought to have sought help earlier than I did. Therefore, I will heal from the damage the best I can.

I am not viewing this in a negative way. It is really a jolt of gratitude that is prominent in my thinking. Because how could I ever wish for a different life than the one I've got? To trade even the darkest of detail for some unknown lighter possibility is to deny the brightest of the bright spots that I have had access to. And that is simply not honorable.

So yes, it is too late for stitches. Yes, I let injury go untreated. But like Dolly at the Bowl, what a show I've gotten to see.

Earth, I love ya, babe.