I was in my kitchen in mah bear (that’s right, they’re hobbit feet) feet, and I knocked over a glass bowl. My kitchen is so tiny I can barely turn sideways between my oven and my sink. It’s really, really small. Anyway, the glass hits the floor and shatters. Really shatters. It turns into gravel, sand, and dust. I’ve never personally made so much accidental glass at once. It’s usually a few chunks and some grit. This was a pile.
I freeze. I do a quick diagnostic to see if I’ve been lacerated to oblivion. But I’m more or less fine. (I discovered two cuts on the top of my foot from impact.) But my left, bare foot, is absolutely covered in glass. If I don’t move, ever, I’m totally fine. Glass won’t osmosis into me.
Glass creates a kind of modern instinctual trigger. We have all kinds of instincts to be scared of stuff. If you get near a toy poodle the size of your thumb and it suddenly growls and bares its teeth, you’ll find yourself jumping backwards about 12389238942389 feet to safety. It’s instinct. Glass wasn’t around during our evolution. But we still developed modern instincts with it. Kind of like seeing a diesel truck driving by with a black cloud about to envelop you. Or a middle-aged woman with color-treated hair, her arms crossed, saying she’d like to speak to the manager. You know to get away and protect yourself.
My foot surrounded by glass looked like some edgy rock album cover. “Deadly Toez: Feel the Feelings.” If I had my phone I would have taken a picture, despite the risk associated with literally standing in glass in my naked feet. But I didn’t have my camera and I wasn’t going to go get it, and reinsert my feet into a pile of doom.
Cleaning up glass is never fun. But man, I had nothing to deal with this. And it took on all sorts of complications. Whatever shoes I put on, would get some amount of glass dust/grit on the soles and then I’d be tracking it around my carpet. If I use my vacuum to suck it up, it’s going to get in the filter and whatnot. I don’t have a dustpan because I’m not living in 1813 England with my step-nephew and his 23 children. I ended up kind of scooping and vacuuming. I think I got most of it. But holy crap that was a lot of glass. I just bought a few more Pyrex containers, which seem to take a bit more beating.
