An amazing thing happens...

...when you bring knives in to be sharpened - they're sharp when you pick them up. And by sharp...I mean REALLY SHARP!!
I brought our knives in to be sharpened for the first time since we bought them almost ten years ago. I think it's recommended to have good kitchen knives sharpened by a professional at least once per year. So, I guess we were a little overdue. Yesterday, I picked them up at the little knife store that's right by my gym (it's really convenient how everything is located right by my gym), and.....damn!!!! Before: they could barely slice a tomato. Now: I can drop a tomato onto the blade and it's sliced right in half.
Now, the only trick is to avoid a repeat of February 14, 1989 when Mrs. TBF arrived at our home in Elmhurst, IL after a 4-hour commute (due to a snowstorm) from work to find me standing in the kitchen, holding a blood-soaked dishtowel around my thumb which I was holding above heart-level to try to stop the river of blood that was flowing from the gash that I incurred when I was trying to get fancy slicing up an onion. I had seen a cooking show where this Asian chef was slicing an onion sideways, and I thought I'd do the same. I took a very sharp knife, grabbed the onion, hacked at the onion sideways, and the blade went right through the onion straight into my thumb. I remember it bleeding for hours, and oozing for a couple of days.
About a week later, I went to the doctor for a physical and showed him the thumb. He told me that I definitely should have had stitches (damn I felt tough!), but that it was too late now. Actually, I probably would have gone to the hospital crying like a sissy when it happened, but I figured that it would take hours in the snowstorm, so why bother?
Besides, if I had had stitches, I probably wouldn't have the cool scar on my thumb to serve as a reminder of the time I tried to get fancy with a sharp knife. And...the slicing into the thumb debacle would have just been postponed by sixteen years. And...I would have had the hassle of going to a Swiss hospital to have it stitched up. And...the Swiss doctors (as they do) would probably have insisted that I spend at least three nights in the hospital for observation.
I guess I'll just try to be careful with the knives!