A few weeks ago a friend called me up, saying she’d cut her finger and wasn’t sure whether she needed stitches or not. I popped over right away (she lives across the street, small town life) and we hemmed and hawed over this deep but not, like, bone-deep slice: “It’s not dangling…” “But it’s still bleeding…”. The prospect of a lengthy ER wait for a stitch or two filled her with dread. “Wouldn’t it be great,” I half-joked, “if they just taught us basic suturing techniques in school?”