Jicama fish tacos. I don’t know if I could imagine a more LA-sounding dish. But they tasted so refreshing and healthy, I had to try my hand at duplicating them on my return to New York. Slicing the jicama thin enough to use as a “faux-tilla” required a mandolin slicer, which I purchased from the K-mart by Penn Station. Like most men would, I ignored the instructions that came in the box. It’s not like there were that many parts to the device, and the action seemed simple enough. I made my first slice, running the jicama along the blade. A thin sliver of jicama fell into the collection box. I made another slice, gaining more confidence. I made a third slice and felt the tidal wave of regret wash over my body in an instant.
I sliced a sliver of skin from my thumb.
I grabbed for a paper towel and wrapped it around my right thumb, afraid to look at what lay beneath. Now, what you should know about me is that I have a history of fainting. I’ve been told that as a baby, ice cream that was, apparently, too cold, made my eyes roll back as I collapsed in my stroller. As a toddler, if I fell or hurt myself, I’d hold my breath until I passed out. And in high school, I tried to donate blood, but fainted as the nurse first put the needle in my vein.
This history in mind, I immediately headed for the couch so I could at least be seated if a fainting spell struck. I could feel the skin on my face growing colder and turning white. The quietness of the apartment I shared with my brother reminded me I was alone. I dialed my parents, wanting somebody to at least be aware that I was unconscious, should nausea overtake me.
“How does it look? Is it deep?” my parents asked.
“I don’t know, I can’t look,” I responded, my eyes closed and my head between my legs. My parents laughed, though they remained sympathetic.
Luckily, my brother’s girlfriend at the time was a doctor, and my brother had just left our apartment with her before the ill-fated taco incident. I hung up with my parents to dial my brother. I cut his date short before it even started, but his girlfriend was able to bandage me up for the night, to hold me over until I went to urgent care the next day.
Making small talk with the nurse at urgent care before the doctor came in the room, I learned that my injury was more common than I thought. “How’d you cut yourself?” the nurse asked.
“Slicing vegetables with a veggie slicer.”
“Was it a mandolin?” she asked. “I did the same thing.”
Thankfully, it was a shallow enough cut and a small enough area that it didn’t require stitches. But to this day, if I need a reminder to slow down, read instructions, and to use any pertinent safety guards, I just look down at my thumb and the faint sliver of lighter skin that healed over my cut. I still flinch when I watch contestants on Top Chef use a mandolin without the guard. I guess I’ll leave it to the professionals.
Oh, and to add further insult to injury, only a few months later while shopping in Trader Joe’s, a plastic package in the refrigerator section caught my eye. Pre-cut jicama slices at a reasonable enough price. A price that didn’t include a severed thumb.
Evan Rusinowitz is a design strategist at an architecture firm and a writer based in the West Village. He is a second-year fiction student in the Creative Writing MFA program at the New School. Evan has a passion for telling LGBTQ stories and making people laugh. In his work, he often explores themes like identity, masculinity, and the comedy in everyday life.
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