I slashed the inside of my thigh open with a pocket knife once. It must have missed the artery by half an inch, maybe, although I didn’t know it at the time. I had, at this point, been hurt so many times that I closed the knife, put down the piece of wood I had been whittling on, and wandered into the house to ask my mom what to do.

She said “oh my God! Your new pants!”

And then we duct taped my leg back together because we didn’t have insurance, and we didn’t want to sit in the ER waiting room for the rest of the day.