Hello everyone!
Have you ever tasted blood? I do not mean the blood of an animal; I mean human blood. Have you? You do not know how human blood tastes? What about yours? Have you never tasted your own blood?
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I know these questions have got you thinking and wondering where I am heading with this. Reflecting deeply on this prompt(things we did as a child), I think one of the most childish yet foolish things we did as kids—those of us who grew up with this belief—was sucking our own blood like vampires and feeling brainy, smart, and fulfilled. Lol! 😂
Back in the day, we grew up with the belief that sucking our own blood whenever we got injured was a way of taking the blood back into our bloodstream, thereby preventing blood loss. It is laughable now, but we believed in this so much that we took it extremely seriously, especially when we got cut by a cutlass while working on the farm or using a knife in the kitchen.
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I hope I am not the only one who did this? No, let it not be just me! I want to see others who can help justify that we were not practicing semi-vampirism in our childhood days.
There was a particular day I was cooking a mini lunch in our kitchen—a traditional village kitchen where we used firewood for cooking. I was preparing vegetable soup using only waterleaf because we had it in excess in our backyard. While slicing the waterleaf, the sharp knife found its way into one of my soft hand. It was not a deep cut, but the blood did not hesitate to flow out. I quickly put my hand in my mouth and sucked the blood as it rushed out. I did not want to lose blood for any reason.
After sucking on the wound until the bleeding stopped, I noticed that some blood had stained the waterleaf I had been cutting. Instead of washing it away, I did not. Instead, I cooked the meal with the vegetables still stained with my blood. Yes, I could not waste the blood! Jeeez! Thinking about this now makes me question whether something was wrong with my mental health at the time. Lol! But I was not the only one—we were all taught to do this, although I never saw anyone else actually cook food containing traces of their own blood.
But come to think of it, we were so afraid of losing blood because we were taught that blood is the major source of life in a human. We learned that once a person lacks sufficient blood, they could fall seriously ill and even die quickly. This is why we also dreaded electric shocks because we were told that a single electric shock could drain a large portion of blood from the body. I have not researched this, but this belief still holds a spot in my mind. Lol!
But it is all good. At least, I know something that most people do not—I know what human blood tastes like. Lol!
Thanks for reading.
This is in response to #Hive-reachout prompt
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