One Hand Washes the Other -- Unless it's Trying to Kill You

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I'm beginning to think my left hand is possessed. I'm right handed, and throughout my life I suppose I've favored my right hand to some degree (insert your sex joke here), but over the last eight months, I think my left hand has been trying to exact a measure of revenge for my favoritism. It's trying to kill me.

In the last eight months, I have managed to smash, cut or otherwise mangle my left hand -- or integral parts thereof -- on six different occasions. Two times the damage has involved crushing or damaging my wedding ring. But that ain't no thang, right?

Oh sure, I'm a tough Construction Dude... cuts and scrapes are nothing -- they're a dime a dozen. We Construction Dudes laugh at scrapes, scoff at minor burns, put on a Band-Aid when most other suburbanites or "FHO's" (Fucking Home Owners) would run to the local ER for a stitch or a shot...

At least we'd have you believe that.

In reality, sometimes it's just that we don't have time. Like last year, when I shot a nail through my finger. I was in the middle of a very important cash side job. The nail was very new -- not rusty. And I needed to stay through the finish -- no time for a three-hour ER break. So I stayed, and I got a tetnaus shot later.

Or the month before, when I was trying to hang a HUGE steel door, and it slipped. Not a HUGE slip -- just a gentle slip to the left, about three inches. Unfortunately, there were only two inches between the door and the concrete structure. My wedding ring kept the door from crushing my finger. But nothing kept the door from crushing my wedding ring. I had to use pliers to get the ring off my finger, which was rapidly turning blue. I used a jeweler to repair my ring. Let's call that a break-even kinda day...

But there came a period of relative calm -- nothing more ominous than the occasional hang nail or hitting the base of my thumb with a hammer while striking (at) a chisel... somewhat painful but no biggee... Then things got seriously bad.

My son Jimmy bought a boat, or rather, his wife Vicky bought him a boat for his birthday. They both invited Robin and I on a shakedown cruise on the Fox River. At the dock, Jimmy backed the trailer into the water, and I had the honor of releasing the winch for the inaugural launch. But when I attempted a release, it sort of exploded in my hands -- grabbing my left hand, by the wedding ring, and pulling it into the winch. In a microsecond, my hand was flipped over my head, and the winch was spinning -- the boat heading out into the river.

Turns out the winch "keeper" had failed. My wedding ring was now oblong, no longer a circle. With a nice divot. But no blood and no missing fingers. We had a nice boat ride, and an exciting afternoon of securing the boat, and all was well.

Instead of a Jeweler, this time I slipped my wedding ring down the shaft of a "spud wrench" -- a steel wrench with a tapered handle -- and used a trim hammer to beat it into round. Then I used my carpenter's trim files to make it right.

The next day, I was called back to work after a long layoff. Back in the "day" I was a superintendent, but with the economy in the pits, we don't have enough work. But my company is gracious enough to call me back to do even the lowly laborers work -- at my old superintendent's pay -- so I LOVE them.

This week, we were clearing out the old ceiling of a school lobby, along with two exit vestibules. I removed sixteen large fire doors from their frames, and they needed to be loaded onto a skid. Like a can-do kind of boss, I helped the guys load them on to a pallet, which is when a stray piece of metal cut my left ring finger, leaving a cut almost two inches long. I managed to get my paw out in the nick of time -- in fact, if I had been wearing my wedding ring, it would have been REALLY ugly.

It was a three-Band-Aid cut. On my left hand. But still, No Big Deal.

But on Saturday it got even better. We were removing a steel-and-glass window wall. It was erected in 5-foot wide by 14-feet-tall segments. We had removed three sections, but the fourth was being difficult -- the section containing the door frame wouldn't come down. I decided to show my crew how it's done... and I would have succeeded uneventfully if the welds along the top hadn't failed.

But they did. The door frame, all 400 pounds of it, twisted as it fell, knocking me ass-over-teakettle, and I cut my hand on something I landed on. Which hand? My left hand, of course. So I had to go to the ER to get fixed up -- nasty abrasions and some shoulder X-rays. I "scalped" my left palm, taking a couple of square inches of skin off -- and there wasn't enough skin left to stitch it together. So they planted some artificial skin/turf on my palm. Sort of a skin-farm growing on my palm.

Didn't even make it eight hours until I drew blood again. The glass door on the medicine cabinet mysteriously fell out of its frame just as we were sitting down for dinner. When I picked up the pivot to examine the wreckage, I cut my left middle finger. You can imagine the look on my face -- sort of a combination of "Duh" and "WTF."

So I'm heading over to the Catholic Church up town. Maybe if I dip my left hand in Holy Water it'll lay off for a while. It can't hurt.