Ladies and gentlemen, let it be known that I, Paul Conover, am officially able, without reprimand, to use one of mankind's oldest tools - the knife - in the workplace. Woe be to my previous thinking that I was well-trained in the practice of slicing and dicing, for in truth it has not been until this day that I am truly worthy of wielding kitchen cutlery. And, armed with my culinary Excalibur, I carved and pared with a new confidence. No honeydew was left whole; no cantaloupe left sheathed in calloused rind. Such unbridled freedom I have never before experienced. Yes, today I have become a man.
I found it humorous that I was required to go through "knife training" today in order to make fruit salad. The managerial type, it seems, doesn't care how many years you've been successfully not cutting your appendages off with knives much sharper than theirs, and prefer that they remind you themselves of exactly how to not do so. This, I suppose, makes perfect sense considering that we share the world with a large percentage of idiots - the continuance of whose appendages, in defiance of all logic, depends on this training. In any case, I managed to prove that I was capable of not endangering the lives of myself and my coworkers; and in the event that the blade should slip, I showed that I knew how to bleed away from the foodstuffs... And yet I'm allowed to operate a tub of boiling cooking oil and an express elevator without so much as a "good luck".
It makes me wonder about "spoon training" or "latex glove training" - both of which, I argue, can be just as lethal as the knife. (Personally I would be most interested in latex glove training, because I've come to the conclusion that literally nothing has the ability to make me feel quite as stupid as the act of trying to put on latex gloves. Those of you who also have sweaty palms, I'm sure, can relate.) Because, if you think about it, everything is deadly, or at the very least a carcinogen. Statistically, I guess, more people are hurt by knives than by lettuce, but perhaps that's precisely the reason that "lettuce training" should be implemented. I would anticipate an injury from a knife, but I wouldn't have a flying clue about how to avoid a salad-related injury.
Safety at work. There is none. On the other hand, though, you're no safer at home. Actually, there aren't many places on earth where you can be completely assured of your survival for the next ten minutes, let alone the rest of the time that you plan on living. The fact is, we aren't guaranteed a life that ends conveniently when we're quite through with it. Rather, it's more likely that death will come awkwardly right in the middle of something totally awesome - like skydiving or going to your grandson's high school graduation. It's when we reach this end of the rope - willingly or not - that we are struck with a reality that Eugene Peterson phrases very well: "...keep in mind that when we're raised, we're raised for good, alive forever! The corpse that's planted is no beauty, but when it's raised, it's glorious. Put in the ground weak, it comes up powerful. The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural—same seed, same body, but what a difference from when it goes down in physical mortality to when it is raised up in spiritual immortality!" (1 Corinthians 15:42-44, The Message).
That's good to know, what with people using knives willy-nilly and such...
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