“Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.”
— Oscar Wilde
In all candor, I have been unable to verify the authenticity of this quote. With that said, however, I do feel more than qualified to vouch for the truthfulness of the statement.
My son got into a rather nasty altercation with a laminate router he had been using last Sunday and as is usually the case, the router won. The blade ate into three of his fingers, causing a slight fracture in one and necessitating 18 stitches overall, along with a tetanus booster shot and a course of antibiotics. As I sit writing this, the full extent of his injuries remains unknown. There will be significant scarring. There may be some sensory nerve damage but he should retain mobility. He will be seeing a hand specialist, to get more answers and decide on a course of treatment. When he started calling people from an urgent care facility, he opened with, “First off, I haven’t lost any body parts.”
When a parent’s child is harmed, no matter how grown up they may be, the parent feels that. This parent does, anyway. The swell of emotions that I felt when I heard the news was extraordinary. In a single instant, I wanted to comfort my son, encourage the healthcare professionals who were treating him, and drag that sonofabitch router into a back alley to beat it into scrap metal with a sledgehammer.
He didn’t need to be told how much worse this might have turned out. He knew. A larger router would have taken the fingers outright, period. Fortunately, he makes his living as a craftsman and an actor. When we spoke on the phone, I half-jokingly told him, “Well, I guess you know you can kiss your career as a hand model goodbye.” But every half-joke contains a measure of truth in the other half. I quickly added, “but only three or four years ago, I kissed my own career as an Olympic weightlifter goodbye.” We both went with the wisecracks but we both understood. What’s done is done.
That incident as well as the conversation that followed brought back some memories, none of them happy ones. And each of them brought the same message: Life’s consequences are for life. Coming up on four years ago, as a result of my own foolish, careless actions, I traded my left shoulder for a prosthetic assembly of titanium and plastic that will never do the work of its predecessor. I can never again lift as much or as high and I may very well outlive the artificial joint that is now inside my body. Still, my recovery was better than 90% of those who have had this type of surgery. I chalk that up to sheer will. I was hellbent on riding my motorcycle and traveling with my pillion companion again, and for years to come.
During my college years and for one year after that, I worked for a packaging company that was headquartered in my boyhood hometown of Blue Island, Illinois. The closely held corporation ran four factories across the US, including the one I worked at just about every summer, and some holiday breaks, from 1979 until 1983. The place I worked at was a paper converting factory, filled with corrugating machines, slitters, die cutters, stampers, printing and embossing cylinders, macerators, and balers. Just imagine lots and lots of large, motorized cylinders and blades, all in motion 24 hours per day, six and a half days per week. Me, I was lucky. I was just passing through, a college kid working there only as long as I needed to. But over the course of four years, I met many wonderful people. And many incomplete human beings.
There were several middle-aged women, housewife types I guess, with one or more short fingers. I never noticed it right away because they were such positive souls, always hard-working and never showing any evidence of loss. There was an older guy with a southern accent. He knew every machine in the plant, so people would often take his advice on productivity matters. And he was so jovial, everyone was always glad to see him. I can’t recall his name but he was short a few fingers and, as he claimed, a couple of toes.
I had an aunt who was both a physical and occupational therapist by profession. She was the only college-educated member of her generation in our family and we were very close. I talked with her about the things I saw at that factory and nothing seemed to surprise her. The industrial injuries, she pointed out, were largely a matter of human nature, reflex reactions. “Your job is to run this machine. You’re working one day and suddenly something falls into the machine. Without even thinking about it, your gut reaction is to reach in and grab that object. The machine takes you in, too, but it’s too late.”
I saw that firsthand, working on a Sunday, when this kid — a young teen, probably working a summer job — was placing old newspapers onto a conveyor belt that fed into a macerator, which instantly pulverized the paper, to be used in the manufacture of insulated envelopes. The drive chain on the conveyor was a bit loose and always slipping off the gears, so at some point, the chain guard had been left off. You know, to save time. So the kid is sitting there, tossing old newspapers on the conveyor, when the drive chain slips off once again. He’d seen the maintenance workers put the chain back on, so he tries to feed it onto the moving gears himself, but his hand is on the wrong side and the chain draws his hand right in against the rotating gear wheel. He yanked his hand free at the last second and didn’t lose any fingers but his right hand was cut and bleeding badly. There was nobody on the limited Sunday shift to authorize anybody to do anything but work. Everybody is standing around trying to decide what to do. Blood is pouring from the kid’s hand. Me, I had nothing to lose, so I yelled, “Come with me!” I took the kid and one other guy to hold his hand up while I broke every law in the book to drive him to the local ER. No regrets. Nobody even questioned me about my actions the following week.
There was one guy, the sole member of the shipping department on the third shift (I heard they paid a buck-fifty an hour extra for people to work on that shift). He would have been in his twenties when I was there — older than me at the time but would seem like a kid to me now. Tall and thin, with thinning blond hair, he had a solitary digit remaining on one hand, which was always wrapped in a dirty whitish bandage. That lonesome appendage was long and judging by the way he used it, I thought that was his index finger. It was his thumb. A machine had taken the rest of his hand.
Some of my coworkers assured me that the guy I’m describing here had been guaranteed a job for life. I’m not sure how that played out, since the company was bought out the year I left and the Blue Island factory was shut down the year after. The kid drove a very nice Pontiac TransAm, metallic silver with the big firebird emblem on the hood. It was an awesome-looking car. I never once saw that young man smile, though. Not even once in four years.
These are the memories that flashed through my mind when I heard that my son’s fingers had gotten torn up on a Sunday afternoon. What’s done cannot be undone. Hopefully, though, we all learn from this harsh teacher called life, as we continue along. Thanks for hanging with me.
I wish I could find the words to express how much I have come to detest politics, especially party politics. I identify as neither Democrat nor Republican. Can’t get far enough away from either. I think the current Republican president has substantial character flaws. On the other hand, I voted against his Democrat predecessor. Twice. I see the upcoming presidential election pretty much the same way I have viewed the last three: a case of two poor choices who are there not on any absolute merit of their own but by virtue of their perceived chances of beating the opponent. This time around we began with a field of many and if all plays out as well-planned by the two pathetic parties, it will all come down to a choice between two geriatric white guys — dumb and dumber. I hope I have made my political stance clear. Now let’s talk about masking, which is not and should not be political at all.
immediately went to my drawerful of biker bandannas. I discovered that I could tie one of these on bandito style and with a simple bit of folding, have four layers of cotton fabric covering my nose and mouth. Sure, there was a little bit of a struggle to keep it in place, especially if I turned my head to look at something on a store shelf, but I got the hang of it after a while. I even conditioned myself not to be so hyperaware of my breathing while wearing a mask. That took a little effort because at first, it was all but impossible for me to breathe normally while wearing the darned thing. What I found harder to deal with was talking to people — or to be more accurate, listening to them. I have a form of hearing impairment that makes speech recognition challenging and I have come to compensate for that by reading lips. That’s difficult to do when everybody has their mouth covered. But again, I have adapted and life goes on.
My work life never stopped because the industry in which I work was deemed essential by the state. We have followed CDC and state guidelines to the best of our abilities, prohibiting face-to-face visits, both inbound and outbound, permitting remote working when and where feasible, and enforcing a variety of hygiene best practices. I have only worked remotely on a few occasions and even held a few virtual social hours on Friday evenings. But for the most part, I chose to be with the rest of my office team and also to set an example.
I am a vice president at a company that employs people to work outdoors in order to provide our essential services. They are required to wear a variety of PPE, including masks when and where required according to state guidelines. In my heart, it just wouldn’t feel right for them to have to be out there, potentially exposed to the virus, while I stayed hidden in my house. We have daily cleaning routines, promote frequent handwashing, and even imported our own hand sanitizer when it was still difficult to obtain. Still, we never mandated mask use in the office and very few people have ever worn one there. We are prepared to strengthen or ease up on our in-office practices as the situation continues to evolve but to date, we have not yet had an employee out with COVID-19 symptoms.
At first it seemed like the COVID curve had begun to flatten but then things began to go the other way. Thanks to a variety of variables, some of which may have been preventable, the pandemic threat appears to be far from over. Misinformation abounds, the finger-pointing never stops, and people continue to die. From all appearances, the need to protect ourselves from this virus is going to continue for a while. Here in Illinois, it hasn’t been as bad as in some other states. More businesses have reopened, with restrictions and precautions in place. 
While my bandanna seemed fine for the occasional jaunt to the grocery store or gas station convenience mart, I didn’t think it would work so well at my local gym, which has reopened. Besides, all my friends and family members were already using disposable or reusable masks, usually the latter, so I decided to step up without making a huge investment. The option I went with is a mask made by Hanes — that’s right, the underwear people. The product appears to be made out of cotton tee shirt fabric and features three layers of fabric and nonelastic ear loops. They are washable, up to ten times, per the package label, and are sold in packs of ten for $20. For me they work just fine but I couldn’t live with the ear loops so I use a couple of split key rings and an elastic hair loop to convert my mask for behind-the-neck fitment. This set-up works for me.
mouth and nose… yeah, it gets pretty damp pretty quick. But it still allows enough airflow through the layers so that I don’t feel like I’m being waterboarded.
That trip didn’t happen and I was plenty down about that but lo and behold, my dentist had a last-minute cancellation and they called me to ask if I could come in. A blessing in disguise? Hey, I stopped believing in accidents years ago.
In the end, I’ll gladly don a mask when asked to do so or when I deem it necessary. I’ll also gladly leave it off if it’s not a requirement and I deem it unnecessary. In both cases, I’m not having a cow over the matter but in both cases I am being a law-abiding grownup. I am also very fond of the businesses I choose to support. If all I have to do to keep them open is put on a mask and/or observe distancing guidance, I got no problem with that. All the more so if that’s all I have to do to help keep my fellow man/woman alive and healthy. To me it just makes sense.
One last thought… Despite appearances fed to us by the media, there really isn’t a political argument to be made for either masking or resisting masking. I have a number of ultra-conservative friends who are also immunocompromised and will absolutely tear into anyone who is “too stupid to put a mask on.” They don’t see a political issue; they see a life-and-death issue. I also have a number of ultra-progressive friends who are relatively easygoing about masking up. It’s probably not so much that they don’t care as they aren’t Pharisees. Of course the bigger question that some of you may be asking right now is, how can people on both extremes, political and otherwise, all be friends of mine and true friends at that? Easy. That’s not how I choose my true friends.
This Is MGD Time 