Let it bleed

Now that my time left in Belgium is countable, I'm trying to quantify the things that I'll miss to help me appreciate it here, and one of them was demonstrated yesterday.

I have a scratch on my finger, a nasty one but I don't know how it got there, which suggests to me it was the cat from when we were playing, as her claws are of a surgical sharpness and it's not unknown for me to not realize she's put me in my place until I'm mopping up the gore some time later. Anyways, I went to the gym yesterday, and whilst fishing around for my membership in my pocket realized that the nastiness I'd felt when I was slinging on my backpack was the wound being pulled back open; I realized this because I had bled all over everything.

And the reaction of the man at the desk, as I narrowly avoided dripping on it and him, was to get me a band-aid and be very pooooor you, you just rush right in to the changing rooms and wash yourself up. No Seinfeld-ian disgust, no health-and-safety face horror, which I really appreciated, even though I thought in the grand scheme of things, there probably should be a little health-and-safety horror at least; I mean, I know my blood is lovely and clean but how could he?

I suppose when I move to Australia I can bid goodbye to that sort of shit. I think they get drunk and beat on each other a fair bit more than Canadians but from all accounts I understand they're also a good bit more health-and-safety than here, like us. And the upshot is that once in awhile houses collapse on people for no good reason here, and they don't in Canada or Australia, and that's bad, but then I can bleed all over the check-in desk of my gym and be sent off with a bandaid and a pat on the head to work out in it, and that's good, for me at least.

Remind me to wash my hands more often though.