Thumb abuse is real. It’s not just something you read about in newspapers or see on TV shows. It happens, pretty often. I’m living proof. Or my thumb is. It looks a bit like a miniature eggplant — a shade of purple so alien it’s found nowhere in nature. Maybe a lollipop, but not nature. And it’s throbbing. It’s throbbing and I can hear it. It sounds like, “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.” It’s referring to me.
How did it happen? How does it ever happen? Idiot with a hammer. Bad eye-hand coordination. No gloves on. Idiot was on roof getting tired and careless. Truth be told, I was probably thinking of cold beer and beef jerky. I lost my concentration and whacked that stub of thumb with a hammer swing that could have broken rocks.
SMACK!
The pain was otherworldly. It felt like a stick of dynamite going off in my hand. It was one of those silent scream pains where you mouth it, but just can’t get it out. Your mouth jerks open wide and squirrels check you over considering whether to build a nest in there. In another dimension, people wondered about the blood-curdling cry they heard.
There are few things in life more painful that a hammer-strike to the thumb. I don’t even think I fractured anything — just a good bruise under the nail that can be seen straight through to the other side. But it was immense pain. The body must have very tender sensors there. There must be a super highway nerve straight to the brain.
That’s the way it goes with house project injuries. It doesn’t have to be tremendously serious to hurt like the dickens. In fact, I think it would hurt less to slice your hand off in a power saw than to even gently smack a finger with a hammer. Not that I’m going to test that theory. That wasn’t the only minor, but excruciatingly painful injury of the day.
I nicked the tip of a finger on a piece of flashing. Tiniest of little cuts — a trickle of blood like a puny mouse hair peeked out. But pain showed up at the party — hot, burning pain. Sharp, itchy pain. All from the tiniest of little wounds. Someone explain that to me? It’s not fair that the smallest often hurt the worst.
And I never seem to have gloves on when I should. That was another thing my throbbing thumb was yelling at me: “Why do you buy gloves if you don’t use them? What do you think they are, underwear?”
Once I cut my hand pretty severely on a piece of steel bar I was cutting. The hand that was in the safest position had a glove on, and yet the poor exposed little fella’ was bare. It was like a horror movie where you’re yelling at the screen, “Can’t you see the knife? It’s a big sharp knife! Duck. Move. Get out of the way. Put a protective leather glove …”
Slice!
I hate me sometimes.
It’s just common sense, and I’ve come to the conclusion men don’t have it. We’re just a hammer blow or a couple sharp object slashes away from extinction. And we have no one to blame but ourselves.
I thought about this as I sat on the roof clutching my throbbing thumb while trying to remind myself that I wasn’t on the ground and shouldn’t make the mistake of walking off the roof. Pain will make you forget insignificant facts like that you’re still up in the air. Many men have stepped off a roof that way — “Hey guys, check this out. My thumb looks like a frozen brisket … Waaaaa!”
When the pain subsided slightly and I finished a symphony of cursing, I slid my aching hand into my glove and went back to work. My throbbing thumb kept lecturing me, and I tried my hardest to keep my mind off the beer and the beef jerky.