The Making of "Frankenstein Thumb"

I had this really vivid dream that me and a bunch of filmmakers I have met at Microcinema Fest were making a movie actually at the festival. It may be because I am looking forward to this year's Fest. It also may have been because I was flying along on Vicodin. Which undoubtedly was because I almost peeled my thumbprint off opening a can of tuna for my cats.

I was using a hand can opener and it slipped out of my hands and fell into the kitchen sink. The first thing I said was, "I screwed up," which I knew I had because I didn't feel anything, just a wave of cold. Which was bad because my thumb was spraying blood on the kitchen floor. I looked closer and saw the ball of my thumb canted out away from everything else. So I wrapped a towel around it, but not before my daughter's friend glommed onto the whole thing and vomited. It was a zany few minutes. I had my wife drive me to the emergency room where after spending a few hours reading five-year-old magazines a friendly doctor put nine stitches in my thumb and patched it back together again. Though I suspect I will never be able to commit any left-handed crimes, because I think I am going to have a weird-looking thumbprint; sort of a Colts horseshoe.

The funny thing was that later my daughter and her friend found a piece of broken Cheeto on the kitchen floor and thought it was the tip of my thumb, until she picked it up with a spoon and butter knife and looked closer. I would have given anything to see my daughter creeping up on what she thought was the remains of one of my appendages with a spoon and a butter knife.

So the muse has gone silent here for a bit longer, maybe until I get the stitches out.

The name of the movie we were making? "Frankenstein Thumb." Ah, Vicodin, my fill-in muse.

Give me a yell at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.