14 DAY TRIAL // Pretty much everybody who has ever had to sign, seal and deliver a letter, browse through a stash of office papers or operate one of those weird, leafy objects we refer to as books, knows that paper cuts hurt like absolute hell.
No, really, paper cuts feel like an army of teeny tiny fire demons are having a rave on the tip of your finger, booze and dancing and bouncers and all. It’s pretty obvious that paper isn’t nearly as scary or as built for the kill as, say, knives, so why is it that paper cuts hurt as much as they do?
The first thing to blame is your fingers
Unlike other body parts, our fingers, together with the rest of our hands, pack a whole lot of nervous endings. This is because we use them to perform very complex tasks that require a great deal of precision to be carried out successfully.
What this means is that, when moving through our flesh, paper has plenty of potential victims to pick and choose from. Like the ruthless killer we know it to be, it decimates whatever nervous endings and other tissues are unfortunate enough to cross path with it.
Now put the blame on the paper itself
The cutting edge of knives is perfectly smooth and sharp. Paper, on the other hand, is kind of rough. What this means is that, when working its way through our skin, paper can cause way more damage than knives. True, this damage is chiefly microscopic so we can’t see it. We can, however, feel it.
Besides, paper cuts do not bleed quite as much as other injuries. Reduced bleeding means that the wounds caused by letters, books and the like more often than not are left without a blood clot to rest on top of them and protect them.
Add to this the fact that there is no way we can go an entire day without using a hand or a finger damaged by a nasty sheet of paper just to let it heal, and it should not come as such as surprise that paper cuts take freakishly long to get better and stop hurting.
Basically, paper cuts are about a great deal of damage caused to a sensitive region of our body that has serious trouble healing. This is why they hurt as bad as they do and this is why having to live with a paper cut is almost as painful as trying to sit through a certain Calvin Klein’s underwear model’s singing repertoire.
Here’s hoping you’ve found this week’s riddled puzzle to your liking and do join us again a week from now for another Freaky Friday Mystery.
