When I was a Boy Scout (yes, I was! I was also an altar boy!) the troop was "contracted" to a farmer to hack corn and high weeds out of his soybeans (don't ask, and it was along time ago). For this, we would each receive a year's subscription to "Boy's Life" magazine and the troop would make some money.

It was also the ONLY time we were authorized to have and use sheath knives. Those without sheath knives were issued corn knives -- a heavy bladed short machete sort of thing.

I was cutting corn and weeds in a row next to Tom. I had a sheath knife, he a corn knife. I turned to my left, hacking as a clump of something and felt a tug at the leg of my jeans. Tom had been hacking to his left, too -- the row where I was.

I looked down and said to Tom, "Hey, you cut my pants!"

He had an odd look on his face and said, "That's not all I cut." And he yelled for first aid.

Looking down again, I noticed blood soaking my pants leg. A *lot* of blood. What I noticed particularily was that it wasn't spurting or bright red and frothy, so an artery hadn't been cut.

I asked Tom to help me walk to the first aid/break station. About a half mile on, we were met by the Scoutmaster and his helpers and I was piggy-backed the rest of the way. Tom came along, and when he got to the station he fainted.

The Scoutmaster had been a medic in WWII and he patched me up. It was a clean, but deep cut and I'd lost about a pint of blood. No problems from it, but the scar is on the outside of my right leg just above the knee. Unfortunately, it's not in a place where I can say, "Ya see this baby? Let me tell ya about..." in a bar, or at least the sort of bar I'd go into.

Tom was fine, and when he grew up he went bad and became a lawyer. The rest of the troop thought I was going to die, and keep telling Tom he'd killed me or at least tried to chop off my leg. They did think that stumbling along for a half-mile while my shoes and socks soaked up blood was "pretty neat."