Here’s a story that will leave you in stitches.

I know it left me that way.

I was eagerly anticipating driving to Beersheba Springs tonight for a cookout in honor of the 20th anniversary of Mountain T.O.P.‘s Adults In Ministry program. There is an AIM camp going on this week, and the traditional Wednesday night program was opened up to guests in celebration of AIM.

I did not know about the corresponding event which took place during the June AIM week until after it had taken place, and I would have loved to have been there. So I didn’t want to miss this week’s event.

I slipped away from work at 3 p.m. and stopped by the apartment to pick some things up and do a little, um, business before heading up the mountain. I was re-buckling my belt when the reversible buckle broke.

No problem; I would stop in Tullahoma, on the way, and buy a new one at Walmart. That’s just what I did. I was in the parking lot, putting my purchases into the back of my car, and I wanted to cut the plastic hanger off the new belt so that I could wear it right away. I had a retractable utility knife, which my father had given me for Christmas, which would do the job quite nicely. I used it to cut the plastic hanger, and I also cut a three-centimeter gash in the side of my index finger.

I was frightened at the length and seeming depth of the cut. I grabbed a wad of paper towel and wrapped it around the finger. I asked a Walmart cart wrangler where the nearest urgent care was, but he didn’t know the term and told me how to get to the nearest ER.

I eventually found the urgent care, where a very nice PA named Amy gave me five stitches and prescriptions for painkiller (only if Extra Strength Tylenol proves insufficient) and antibiotic.

I was at urgent care for more than an hour and a half, so by that time I really needed to return to Shelbyville to get my meds rather than proceeding on to Beersheba Springs, where I’d probably have arrived just as the formal program was wrapping up.

The shots I was given to numb me for the stitches are just wearing off. I’ve taken the Tylenol, and the finger isn’t bad right now.

I’m so disappointed at not having been there to celebrate AIM with so many of my good friends. My schedule of foreign mission trips the past few years has made it impossible to attend the week-long summer AIM weeks; I used to do two weeks every summer. I made it to a fall weekend last year, but the fall weekends don’t offer the Summer Plus or Kaleidoscope programs in which I usually participate during the summer. “Uncle Ben” Neal was posting to his Facebook page this week about how well Kaleidoscope is going this week, and I was so jealous.

I was also going to use this as a chance to hand some DVDs off to Gail Drake, who led the AIM program for many years. I called Gail after I left urgent care, telling her what had happened and asking her to give my love to all my friends on the mountain.