A while back, I wrote a post about several times I had accidentally cut myself. Well, in case you were wondering, those were not the only times I’ve been cut. I want to share a few more today and hopefully, you’ll be entertained for a few minutes as you delve a little deeper into my life lessons.
I had been working at my new job for just a few weeks packing vinyl siding in boxes as it came off a conveyor belt. Sometimes a piece of trash would get in the vinyl somewhere along the way and it would make a hole in the piece of siding. When that happened we would have to quickly saw the piece of siding off behind the hole with a hacksaw and feed it back into the track between the rollers.
One night, a huge hole formed so I grabbed the hacksaw and cut the piece of siding as fast as I could, but I wasn’t fast enough to get it back into the rollers in time. I had to try it again so I grabbed the quick-moving siding with my left hand and the saw with my right hand and started sawing again. After only two strokes, I stopped. To my shock, the second stroke had cut my thumb almost completely off.
I ran to the restroom and washed my thumb in the sink. I could see that the saw had cut a trench in my thumb as wide as the teeth on the blade. There was only a small section of the nail and flesh left, and I was in a lot of pain.
I went to the emergency room and got it patched up. Then I spent the next week at work pushing a broom for twelve hours. That was worse than the accident itself. I finally was able to start doing more after a week and soon I was back to regular work.
Several years later, I picked up a small, metal pipe at work to toss it in the scrap truck. As I tossed it, I simply pushed it off the tip of my middle finger to watch it flip into the trailer as I had several times before. I didn’t get to watch it flip that time because as it left my hand, it took a piece of my finger with it. There was a metal burr on the end of the pipe and it sliced right into my flesh. More pain and more bandages, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
I have had some pretty bad scrapes and cuts and cracks. A few of them have been on, or around my head, but not many directly on my face. There was that one time, though. My wife’s dad had a camper he was using as a storage shed. He had built a deck around two sides of it. We lived just down the road.
My oldest son and I were doing something there and I stepped up onto the deck which was only a few feet high. The sun was setting in the sky, and I was facing West so it was shining right in my eyes. Just as both feet hit the deck, I came to a quick stop. It was a hard stop, too. My face had hit the end of a TV antenna pole that was propped up on the deck at about a thirty-degree angle. It struck me at the top of my nose right between my eyes.
My vision became blurry for a minute or so. When I felt to see how bad it was, then I felt the blood and I felt the pain arrive. When I looked at my hand it was bloody. I told my son we needed to go before I passed out. We made it home and I cleaned it up and got to feeling better, but I still have the scar to remind me of that painful day.
Let me give you one more for the road. I was picking a few things up off the floor at work. I don’t remember what it was but there were several of them. I think it might have been trash or screws or washers. I don’t know. I guess it really doesn’t matter because what happened next is what I want to tell you about.
When I bent over to pick up that last, whatever, I would never have imagined what happened next could even be possible. As I raised back up, my head was abruptly stopped by the sharp corner of an electrical panel. I hit it hard, and it cut deep. I think it took three stitches to close the wound. I’m not sure about that either. The whole thing is a bit blurry. Anyway, I feel I was blessed in all of these situations because each one could have been worse. I truly believe that old saying, “It could always be worse.”
I feel fortunate to have experienced all I have in my life, and I’d like to think that I learned valuable lessons from each experience. If nothing else, hopefully, I at least learned not to do the same thing again.
———————————————–
My Blogs
https://teddylynn.blogspot.com
https://teddylynn.wordpress.com
© 2017 Teddy Lynn – All Rights Reserved
My books are available in paperback and digital format on Amazon @
https://www.amazon.com/Teddy-Lynn/e/B01MZDB6L6
