Letters To An
Overseas Friend.

A spoon gouge getting away from you ain’t no joke. Also, this is by far the goriest post ever.

Long story short, a couple of days ago, I cut my finger with a hand tool whilst woodworking and, Tweedlee Dee, that required a tetanus shot. In the emergency room. And a bunch of stitches. In the end, no permanent damage (apparently, when it comes to the finger, severing an artery ain’t no thang, and grazing a tendon has pretty much the same effect as missing it entirely) and the amount of professional medical attention, blood loss (interesting discovery, straighten a severely cut finger and you have a scene from CSI, make a fist, and not a drop), and post injury wrapping was not proportional to the degree of injury. Or, I stepped in front of a speeding bullet and all I got was a flesh wound.

But, as always with incidents involving honed metal, there’s a teachable moment. I was certainly not wreckless. Nor do I believe I was even careless. Just before the incident, I noted how attentive I was by keeping my left hand well behind the tool in a spot where by the laws of physics couldn’t get injured in a mishap. Well, looks like I practice safe hand placement less than 100% of the time. But that’s OK because my tool almost never slips. And when it does, my hand is usually in a safe spot, so it’s OK, right? It’s not OK. “Almost” and “usually,” words that should not have inspired the amount of confidence I had. Hubris will destroy us all. Hubris, like Charlie, only bit your finger because you put it in its mouth.

Short story long would be a post of my trip to the emergency room, which would be entertaining as hell, but I’m not emotionally ready yet to speak in detail of my spiritual depansing.

I’ve said this before and I’ll keep saying it. Removing luck from the equation, the BC medical system has provided me with positively and surprisingly remarkable care an opinion altering number of times.