So I had one of those mornings today.
    You know the ones.  Those mornings when you wake up and you are living on borrowed time.  As if you'd gone to the time bank and taken out a loan, just enough to get you through the day and back to your bed as early as possible to pay it off.  When your hands are maybe a little shaky, your voice deep and growly, eyes red and itchy.
    Those mornings when you wake up and while preparing the kitchen sink for your thrice-a-week shave, you notice a big clump of blue toothpaste stuck to the metallic cleanliness of that basin most people think is just for washing dishes.  It bothers you (again) to see toothpaste, spaghetti sauce, and a fork co-existing without complaint.
    And you wet your face.
    Which is oily and stretches more than usual, but your discretion and control over it are at below average levels, as if to compensate.
    And as I lathered up, I began to think, initially, about coconuts.
    More specifically, I thought out the idea that coconuts are a leading cause of death.
    On a small island off the East coast of Thailand, so I've heard, the number one cause of death is coconuts falling from palm trees, and striking people, particularly back-packing tourists riding in the back of pick-up-truck-taxis on dirt roads, in the head.
    And if death can be so common, yet so random, so bizarre and unthinkable as to be brought on by falling coconuts, a secret kept hidden from most of the world, I immediately thought to myself- "How many people kill themselves, accidentally, while shaving in kitchen sinks?"
    And I came to the conclusion that it must be very, very common.  In fact, I'll bet it happens at least once a day, somewhere in the world, every single day.
    Every day, someone wakes up, maybe a bit droopy, hands a bit shaky and skin a little stretchy, and lathers up.
    Every day someone runs their right hand across their throat, feeling the skin roll over the Adam's apple, and marvels at how exposed the damn thing is.  And, hands a little shaky and eyes a little itchy, somebody starts to shave, but soon after cuts themselves and has this realization, in the first tenth of the first second after it happens: "OK.  I have just cut myself, and I know this because I felt the steel slice through my skin.  Though I do not yet see any blood, I am confident that I should panic now, and increase my heart rate, since there is no doubt in my mind that I am going to bleed.  A lot.  In fact, this is no simple flesh wound.  I have clearly severed a part of my body which is absolutely essential to survival, and I did it with the same ease and comfort level with which I trim my sideburns two times a week, and with as little thought to effort and consequences."
    Then, I suppose, that person probably slides quickly into panic, brought on most directly but the sight of their own blood pouring, if not leaping, (in much the same way that a starving child would presumably leap at the sight of a block of cheese), out of their body, form a place where they never would have thought so much blood routinely passes in such a short amount of time.  Splashing against the mirror, rolling down into the drain, drips and spurts flying up into the eyes and nose.  The smell and taste of coagulating blood.
    But since the voice box is so closely tied to the Adam's apple, it seems to me that these unfortunate souls have to suffer largely in silence, though I would guess that they try to make some kind of racket, (in an effort to attract some attention and keep the engine of life from stalling, coughing, and sputtering), perhaps by throwing over the refrigerator, or hurling the toaster oven through the window.
    When all was said and done, though, I'd say it's fairly inevitable that this person, at least once a day, somewhere in the world, would die alone, cursing his own stupidity, drowning on the floor in his own hot, treacherous blood.