To: lsell@msu.edu, lisa@ah5.cal.msu.edu, vanhoose@msu.edu,
rickard@info.cren.net
From: mrln2@pilot.msu.edu (Marilyn M. Everingham)
Subject: ... with a bloody knife and bloo
>Byline: Cindy Loose. "Experiencing a Slice of Bagel Life: The Less
>Adept Find the Cutting Edge of a Round Bun." Page A1, A18. Washington
>Post, Feb 25, 1995.
>
>Every weekend, they arrive at District and suburban emergency rooms with
>blood dripping from their injuries: upstanding citizens, often leaders in
>their fields, sometimes with their pajamas showing beneath their coats.
>
>It happened one morning to Eric Berman, head of research for the
>Democratic National Committee. He tried to hide his wound, wrapping it in
>a red kitchen towel. But when his face turned ashen, his mother-in-law
>shoved him into a cab and took him to George Washington University Medical
>Center.
>
>"When I pulled off the towel, the doctor said, 'Oh, a bagel injury.' He
>knew immediately, " Berman said of the cut he suffered while slicing his
>breakfast. How could the doctor conclude that about a patient he'd never
>seen before?
>
>"Oh, we get a bunch of these every Saturday morning," Berman said the
>doctor told him.
>
>Indeed, an informal survey of area hospitals revealed that bagel-related
>accidents are, in the words of Mark Smith, head of George Washington's
>Department of Emergency Medicine, "the great underreported injury of our
>times. I wish I had statistics, but I can say it's unbelievable how many
>there are."
>
>An epidemiologist tracing the surge in bagel accidents no doubt could find
>its roots in an explosion of bagel consumption and franchises, with
>national sales approaching $1 billion a year. In the Washington area, for
>example, Chesapeake Bagel Bakery started with on store on Capitol Hill in
>1981 and now has 35 in the Washington area, 60 nationwide and 361 more in
>development.
>
>Spokesman Dan Rowe said Chesapeake sells 700,000 bagels a week in this
>area alone. Its major competitors here include Whatsa Bagel, Bethesda
>Bagel, and Brueggers Bagel Co., which entered the D. C. market a year ago,
>and now has eight stores, not to mention independent bakeries and the
>bagels and bagel look-alikes sold in grocery stores.
>
>With all those slippery spheres being sliced by recent converts to the
>once-humble dough brought to America by Jewish immigrants at the turn of
>the century, accidents were inevitable. There is even a Yiddish word to
>describe a person who cuts himself while cutting bagels: klutz.
>
>"The bagel is inherently unstable because it's round," said Smith, of
>George Washington Medical Center. "In fact there are two unstable
>surfaces: the knife against the bagel and the bagel against the table."
>
>That inherent instability is exacerbated by the firm, fight-back crust
>around a softer middle. "This is speculation, but I theorize that it's
>difficult to modulate the force needed to get through the exterior once
>you hit the doughy part, and you cut your finger," Smith said.
>
>A spokeswoman for Georgetown University Medical Center, misunderstanding a
>voice mail message, returned a reporter's call prepared to discuss fatal
>injuries. Informed of the real query, she changed course without missing
>a beat. "Oh, *bagel* injuries," Claire Fiori said. "Oh, yes. That's one
>of our biggest."
>
>She summoned Thomas Stair, head of the emergency medical department, who
>said bagel accidents are a "recognizable syndrome. ...There should be a
>name for it. It's a good opportunity for an eponym: Somebody should
>write a paper and get it named after themselves."
>
>There is one bright spot for hospitals: Nearly every bagel victim is
>insured. As trauma technologist Rick Tuppen put it, bagel cuts are the
>bane of the middle class." This ethnic import from Eastern Europe has
>acquired a certain cachet associated with urbanity, upward mobility,
>East-Coastness, even effeteness.
>
>"I'm so embarrassed about my cut," Berman said. "My populist reputation
>is shot."
>
>Bagel cuts, while hardly fatal, can be frightening. Chris Enochs, manager
>of design services at Georgetown Medical Center, was bleeding profusely
>from a stab wound incurred while cutting a frozen bagel when he heard a
>knock on the door.
>
>"A lady from the homeowners association was delivering newsletters, and
>there I am standing at the door with a bloody knife and blood-drenched
>clothes." He said she turned as pale as he was but calmed down enough to
>give him a ride to the hospital.
>
>"I ate that bagel when I got home," Enochs said. "I won't ever let a
>bagel get the best of me."
>
>After seeing Berman's bandaged middle finger, his colleagues gave him a
>device they considered a joke: a bagel cradle It holds the bagel while a
>person cuts (George Washington gives cradle brochures to bagel victims).
>
>Berman did not get a bagel guillotine -- a more expensive model with a
>built-in slicer.
>
>He did, however, get some sympathy: Dallas Morning News reporter Susan
>Feeney dropped by his office for some election statistics and ended up
>offering her own "I cut myself and someone bought me a cradle" story.
>
>Robert Rothstein, chairman of emergency medicine at Suburban Hospital in
>Bethesda, said bagel victims tend to be embarrassed, but the near epidemic
>is causing more of them to "come out of the closet."
>
>"There's a whole cult of people out there who have cut their fingers with
>bagels. ... So many," Rothstein said, "that there must be some sort of
>support group by now."
>
Marilyn Everingham
Michigan State University
Duct tape is like The Force: They both have a light side and a dark side
and hold the Universe together.
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