The non-Zen of making tea

The other day I was making a pot of tea, and I wasn’t really paying a whole lot of attention to the task at hand. So to speak.

Meaning, I was thinking about something not involving pouring boiling water out of a kettle and into a teapot. (I don’t have no truck with using tepid or even pre-boiling water for making tea.) Kettle in one hand with stream of extremely hot water arcing out, tab of tea bag in other (you know, so the tail doesn’t swoosh into the pot and then you have to pick it out with your fingers because you’re too lazy to go get a spoon).

So it really wasn’t a huge surprise when I overshot the pot and splashed the water onto my hand. It was kind of interesting, though, because part of me detached to observe everything that was going on.

There’s a fleeting moment—that nanosecond where you see the water careening off the exterior of the teapot and headed for your hand—when you realize that this is not going to end well, but it’s too late to do anything about it, prevention-wise. And then the very instant that the water strikes your fingers, just as the pain receptors are firing up to your brain, time freezes just long enough so you think, “You know—the time for concentrating on what’s happening was about seven seconds ago, not now.”

And then you shoot into all kinds of action—slamming the kettle on the stovetop, whipping your hand away and flapping it about, dancing around the kitchen and howling. There are also a few words that your mom might not be happy about.

I will say this—pouring boiling water on your hand turns out to be an effective method of taking your mind off back pain. However, I don’t really recommend it as a regular therapy.