PA-TING!

Most of me is at work right now. I say most of me is at work because quite a bit of me is still at home, in the basement, wound around a saw blade.

I should start by noting that I had my safety goggles on. Safety first—that’s my motto. It’s because I was wearing my safety goggles that I was able to avoid getting blood and bone fragments in my eyes.

I was making a toy box for my sweet baby niece. I had just cut the last piece of wood that I was going to cut that day. It fitted where it belonged nicely. Because I am who I am, however, I decided that if I were to take another 0.00000042 inches off, it would fit perfectly.

Because I wouldn’t be able to tolerate a crooked line on my sweet baby niece’s toy box, I watched the wood go through the table saw very closely—so closely, in fact, that I was able to pay no attention whatsoever to where my hand was. Suddenly there was a blood-curdling PA-TING! as my left thumb exploded into little more than a crimson mist and fond memories. I made a sound I’ve never made before—a sound I wasn’t aware I could make—and I ran upstairs to find my girlfriend.

Now, every guy has a set of criteria that he’d like his ideal girlfriend to meet—attributes that she would have in a perfect world. Because of the very nature of how guys operate, these characteristics are largely unrealistic. Believe me when I tell you, though, that if you have a girlfriend who can keep her head when one of your thumbs goes missing, and get you to a hospital quickly, you have more than you ever could have hoped for.

Six hours later I stumbled out of the emergency room covered in bandages, blood, and sawdust, and I stumbled into a fancy restaurant and ordered a lovely chimichanga with chili con queso. It was very good.

That was Sunday. Since then I’ve been fueled by antibiotics and Vicodin. This morning I saw a plastic surgeon to discuss whether I’ll need skin grafts. He made me take my own bandage off. Whether that’s some sort of new hospital policy, or he just does it for sadistic giggles, I don’t know. I will tell you this, though: There’s no truer test of a man than to give him a tweezers and ask him to take his own bandage off. That was the toughest thing I’ve ever done.

So, what did I learn from this experience? The human race recently had a little movement called the Industrial Revolution, wherein we got smart and built machines to do the work that held the potential for bodily harm. There are big factories with tall and majestic smokestacks on their roofs that churn out hundreds of toy boxes a day. People—thanks to the Industrial Revolution—can walk into almost any mall and purchase an inexpensive yet sturdy toy box and return home with all their body parts intact. Embrace progress—that’s what I learned. Embrace change. Buy a plastic toy box and keep both your thumbs.