the blade

the blade. This little rat bastard imposed its evil on Jimbo yesterday.
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I was less than a block away from home last night when my car began to make a strange noise. It was like that noise we used to make when we would take a clothespin and clip a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card to the rear frame of our bicycle and twist it into the spokes of the rear wheel, so it would make a repetitive motorcycle-like sound as we rode. Ah, for those sweet salad days of youth when we could throw away a hundred grand for a brief joyride, and those days before Bush when we could afford to do it.

I was a little late coming home from work last night because I was researching hand safety for a presentation I am going to give next week. Where I work the supervisors and staff take turns giving a safety presentation once a month to the shop employees. October is my turn and so I have done a lot of background work on how to keep ones hands from getting injured. Are you aware that when handling knives, one of the most important things to remember is to keep a sharp blade? The last thing I did at work on Friday was to talk to the shop supervisors about that exact subject. I told them that I had ordered a couple dozen utility knives since I’ve been there, but I didn’t remember ever ordering any replacement blades. They told me we order them a hundred at a time and they last a while. By the way, they told me, we’re getting low on them. I placed an order for a hundred of them and left work for the week. It was on my way home that the car started making noise.

I drove the block or so to chez Jimbo’s girlfriend, pulled into the driveway and walked around the car to see what was making the noise. It appeared there was a stick wedged in between the right rear tire and the plastic wheel well insert. I reached in to knock it out—a mistake. The “stick” turned out to be the little rat bastard in the picture above, and Jimbo cut the crap out of two of his fingers on his left hand.

The good news is that they didn’t have to stitch me up; the bad news is that they glued the wound on one finger shut and it is still oozing some blood this morning.

Oh, well. Live and learn, I guess. It will give me a brief anecdote with which to begin my presentation, and a “don’t you do this” admonition.