I’ve gotten used to blue jeans, shirts and coats getting torn open from catching on barb wire but it aggravates me every time it happens and I don’t accept it very well. I know I have to expect it to happen occasionally but sometimes it seems like it happens regularly. It makes me spew hot words every time it happens to me or I see my son’s or husband’s clothes ripped (you shoulda seen my husband’s pair of Wranglers with the big rip in the seat).
New rips either get left that way or I have to spend half a day repairing them. If I ignore them they start to fray and enlarge with every wash. If I decide to patch them I spend an aggravating afternoon figuring out how to get my sewing machine needle to it, or have to take it apart so I can patch it up good. The majority of barbwire rips are L shaped and not a quick fix. I need heavy duty notions and equipment to fix my husband’s jeans.
The other day, I got snagged as I was dragging the gate post open at the Reed Place to dump a load of water for the heifers. My energy was drained from doing some hand digging in a waterline all day and the gate post felt like a green (as in freshly cut) five foot 18 inch in diameter log. As I lazily went to toss the post on the ground, it caught the hide on my hand and jerked me toward the ground. Just below the knuckle on my thumb, a U shaped (because the barb pulled in the opposite direction) chunk of hide turned white around the edges then started to ooze when I tried to lay the skin back in place.
It wasn’t a very big gouge but she hooked me plenty deep. Because of the cuts small size, it didn’t really justify stitches but was in a bad location. I normally try to get by without band aids on hand cuts because I can never get one to stay on very long, but was concerned about the cut staying clean and getting re-snagged on something else. I picked out a cloth band aid and it lasted a couple of hours before one end loosened and flapped around. I added some white tape to hold the end that lost its sticky, but it eventually loosened with every hand movement so I was down to extra washing and reapplying antibiotic ointment. So far so good. I’m sure I would’ve still been just as mad if it had been clothes that ripped but I would’ve preferred that over my skin.
(I don’t know what it is with that place but I’m still trying not to put pressure on the gargantuan bruise and scab on my shin I got there last week. While standing on the flatbed trying to get Pepper to load, I stepped on the tongue of the Pennel hitch and slid to the ground on my shin from the top of my ankle to below my knee cap.)
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