We've gotta work on this truth-in-advertising thing. Sure, who hasn't heard that chocolate is bad for you? Rots your teeth, fattens your ass, puts the thunder in your thighs? Sure, we've got it. We ignore it every time we buy a candy bar.

However, in all those PSAs, parental lectures, and root canals, has anyone ever said to you "Stay away from that nasty chocolate or you'll get a one-inch gash on your left thumb?" Don't think so.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am the only person I know who has shed blood over a Sunday morning chocolate craving.I have also, however, managed to prove yet again that the severity of my injuries can be determined by the amount and hue of my swearing just after the injury is sustained. Torrents of colorful and inventive invective can mean only one thing: paper cut.

For some reason, the breaking of bones or the flagrant spouting of blood makes me completely forget how to swear.

When I went to Harry's Farmers Market in Atlanta a little over a week ago, I spotted broken bricks of Callebaut baking chocolate for sale on a table near the cheese section. I came home with samples each of the dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white chocolate.

This morning, I said to myself, "Mmmmm, white chocolate. I'll break off a bit and nibble on it." For the sake of not making you run and scream, I will not tell you what happened next, except that it involved a butter knife, a completely incomprehensible and utterly inexplicable accident, and me standing there holding my left hand and thinking, "Ooops."

(See also, major gift for understatement after more-than-minor injuries.)

I can only assume that I managed to forget about the piles and piles of utility toweling in the kitchen due to the blood loss. Meanwhile, I stood there, bleeding freely upon myself while standing there and thinking dumbly, "I really should do something about - "

Ring! (Proving once again that the phone is far more likely to ring when you are physically incapable of answering it.)

I said a less-than-interrogative "Hello" into the phone. The caller ID said that it was my spouse.

"You ready to go to lunch with us?"

"Um. No. You'll have to excuse me, as I'm currently bleeding profusely into a kitchen towel at the moment. I'm going to have to pass on lunch."

His answer was, of course, the summation of so many of the reasons why I adore my spouse: "Well, then, why don't you take care of that, and we'll talk in a bit." Unflappable. Absolutely unflappable. Anyone else, hearing that dead-calm-over-utter-panic note in my voice, probably would've dropped the phone and come running at full speed.

Not Jeff, whose lack of panic tends to inspire lack of panic in me. Then, of course, I hung up the phone and went into the bathroom to bleed freely for another minute or two. I applied compression to the cut, determined it was really ugly, would probably scar, but probably wouldn't require stitching -

- then bandaged it up, sat on the couch, and swore for about thirty seconds straight.

After the swearing tapered off into something more resembling a low, rolling mumble, I stomped into the kitchen, got the chunk of chocolate, sat back down on the couch, and proceeded to enjoy every scrap of it.

If you were going to bleed for it, wouldn't you?