Alexander the tool man

Recently I found that as far as tool safety goes….I suck at it. Over the course of just 5 hours working in my garage, I managed to severely burn my hand, burn my neck, be electrocuted (although Thor helped with the last two) and break my toe. Although I plan to recount this tale that would have driven an OSHA inspector in convulsions, it is not the primary purpose for the spinning of this yarn. My main objective for this account is to speak of an act of stupid hardly seen by homo sapien.

THE GIRL, THE TOE AND EVERYTHING

I have been building armor for 17 years now and I am no stranger to my work bench. However, as anyone who knows me will tell you I frequently allow people to use my garage to fix, build or repair things. Sadly they usually leave it a mess and I cuss and scream, I clean it up and we rinse, wash and repeat the entire process over again.

A few days ago while in a rush, after someone had used my work bench and made it a mess and prior to any clean up, I was trying to build my lady some new chest armor. I was happily pounding away on silly little pop rivets because my lady is about the size of Mir Cat and doesn’t need anything larger when suddenly I heard a very loud clunk. Almost immediately after hearing the clunk, little stars began to flash before my eyes. Despite my distorted vision, I looked at the ground toward the sound and saw a 10 pound shot-put, that I use for dishing, rolling away from my foot. Like any smart weekend carpenter I was wearing UGGs for maximum protection of my foot. With little flashing of lights in my eyes, I immediately realized what had happened. The shot-put had been on my desk and not in its normally secure resting place and had rolled off the work bench onto my foot. The strange part was that I had not yet felt any pain. It was surreal. It had been several seconds and although I was seeing an optical response, It was almost as if there was a little switch board operator in my foot that had just watch all the pain needles jump off the scale and said, “Nah, I am not sending this to the brain…this can’t be right.” However, moments later he realized this was not a drill and these were not malfunctioning gauges. I felt the pain waves shot up to my leg, through my testicles (who without delay took shelter), into my chest cavity, finally arriving at m head. Although the majority of my body “manned up” my undisciplined mouth yelled like a twelve year old girl who just got a pony. This was immediately followed by a barrage of colorful metaphors.

I knew I had to get ice on it immediately so I began to limp/hop toward the refrigerator. I got about half way when I decided I had to take off my super soft UGG boot because my toe was swelling so fast that it stretched the fabric to its limit. In what I can truly say was one of the weirdest feelings I have ever felt, I flung my boot off with a shake of my leg. My Rottweiler, apparently realizing I was in pain walked up behind me and licked my smashed and already purple toe. I really wish I could describe the sensation of the loving gesture from my dog. However words do not begin to describe the incredibly bizarre and painful sensation. I hoped on.

After making it to the fridge I began to calmly looking for frozen corn or peas knowing that this would be the only thing that I could wrap around my foot without too much pain. That is to say I began flinging frozen object behind me pell mell trying to find the elusive item of my desire.



Hearing frozen portions of poultry and cattle hitting the floor my lady came down stairs. I could tell from the look in her eyes that she was very concerned.

“Are you ok?” she said nervously.

I took a deep breath to abate the pain…which did not abate…composed I responded to her question, “FUCK!” followed by a deep throaty growl.

She noticed my toe, “Oh my god, what did you do?” She said with compassion and concern in her voice.

In-between pants and gasps for breath, in an unruffled and dignified manner I responded, “FUCK!”

The pain was incredibly intense. I could feel that a portion of the bone in my toe had been smash. I was fighting off shock. As I have learned over many years of my life from being a retard I began to try and calm myself and gain control of the pain.

My lady still very concerned again asked, “What happened?”

The pain spoke for me as I harshly said, “I smashed my fucking toe!”

She covered her mouth in what I thought was a gesture of shock. “Oh my god, how?” she said, her hand still in front of her mouth”.

“The damn shot put rolled off my damn work bench and…” my words trailed off as I looked at her and noticed the wrinkling in her eyes. What I saw next was the horror that every attached heterosexual man must deal with. She was not crying or concerned. She was freaking laughing! She could barely contain herself. I watched her desperately fight back the hysterics and tears. “Are you laughing?” I demanded.

“NO” she said with denial in her voice, and tears running down her face.

WELL DONE AND THEN SOME

Like any soldier would I was determined to not let a little thing like a smashed toe dissuade me from my mission. I returned to the garage where Thor had arrived to help me weld a helm together. We began working and finished the helm in record time. It was easy….in fact….it was too easy. Then I made the mistake of a lifetime and tempted the armoring gods by saying, “Damn, that was easy, you want to do another one brother?”

We began working on a second helm. While trying to pick up a piece of steel that was laying flat on the ground I took my welding gloves off and forgot to put them back on. We began cutting steel slats with a torch and despite the fact that I know never do that without welding gloves I proceeded to hold the metal we were working on. I had decided to put my gloves back on as soon as we finished the cut we were on. In the rookie move of the year, as Thor finished the cut, I proceeded to grab to molten hot slag dripping of the end of the steel slat. Of course I pulled my hand away immediately. Noticing my rapid jerking and hand waving motion my bestest bud Thor began to laugh.

Tip of the Day: If you are ever wondering how bad is that burn, ask a welder. They frequently get burns of all kinds and know the severity as well as any trauma doctor.

After stopping my hysterical chicken dance I looked at my hand. This had two effects. First I realized I had burned my hand pretty bad. It also stopped Thor from laughing. After a quick pause he said, “ooowww, yeah…that is bad”. For those of you who are wondering…hearing “that’s a bad burn” from a guy who had actually welded his penis was not reassuring. I called for Dawne to bring me some burn cream (yes, I have burned myself enough to keep silver sulfadiazine in my house).

She came out with the cream, her head down, body quivering as she handed me the cream and walked back into the house trying not to laugh out loud.

HURT SO BAD SHE ALMOST SUFFOCATED

With determination compared to that of the Light Brigade, I again walked (limped) into the garage. Thor and I once more took up our attack on the second helm.

We were getting close to finishing. I was holding the helm while Thor “welded out” the inside. When suddenly the rod he was using to weld got caught on the steel. This is not uncommon and happens with some regularity. What does not happen with regularity is as he tried to free the rod it broke loose from the steel and he slashed it across my throat. As Thor had his welding mask down he didn’t realize that he had hit me with the rod and went back to his last position expecting the helm to be in the same spot. It was not. The rod hit me in the throat and did three very distinctive things. First it burned the hell out of my throat…but that was the lesser of three evils delivered onto me. The second thing it did was make my throat feel as if I had swallowed a 9 volt battery. If you have ever placed a 9v to your tongue, you get the idea….just picture it in your throat. The final evil and worst by far was that the rod delivered 220v into my neck! For those of you unfamiliar with anatomy that is pretty close to my skull. It was as if someone had hit the reboot button on my brain. My arms snapped to my chest and my hands curled up into tight little three pronged claws. My head was turned slightly to the side and my balance was shit all. I wobbled in back and forth in front of the masked Thor who was slowly realizing something was wrong. He finally lifted his hood and looked at me. I could see he was working through in his head what had suddenly just turned me into broken human metronome. I saw it suddenly appear on his face as he realized what had happened and like any true friend began to point and laugh. I would have told him to stop but I had just deep throated an electric eel and my voice box was pretty pissed about it. To his credit he did put his mask back down while he was laughing so I didn’t have to catch the full brunt of his hysterics.

THE REAL STORY

I gave you the prelog so that I when I said I was sore you would fully understand that it was not just your normal “sore”. It was the kind of sore reserved for over the hill weekend warriors and men not smart enough to wear work boots or gloves while working on hot molten metal.

I came home from a 16 hour day of work. I was tired and SORE. I went to my room, stripped and laid down next to my female. She was comforting as she always is and offered a sundry of pleasantries to try and make me feel better. I declined as I was just so tired all I wanted to do was sleep. I laid there for a while and listed to Dawne nod off and I do most nights and as per usual I was comforted to know she was resting. I took a deep breath in and then let it go with the days troubles. Unfortunately my blissful relaxation was disturbed. While I laid there I realized that I needed to go to the bathroom. I got up and with my old knees as stiff as ever peg leg walked to the bathroom. I didn’t turn the light on as I didn’t want to wake Dawne and I have done this routine many times. Naked as a jay bird I sat down on the toilet with a thump, my knees apparently only working at the 180 degree or 90 degree angle. Sadly as my rump hit the toilet I felt the splat of water. A reminder to me that the dog water bowl must be empty and Shae has been drinking from the toilet and slobbering all over the seat. I lifted my hulk up and tottered forward to grab a towel on the back of the door. I grabbed the towel and tried to dry off my butt. In the most pathetic display of all time I literally walked in circles as I tried to dry myself because I was so sore that I began to twist as I reached around myself. During this dance of the sadness I dropped the freaking towel. I stared at it for some time deciding whether I should reach down for it or just say screw it and get another off the back of the door.

A quick look. No other towel on the back of the door. Decision made.

I bend over with the idea that I will just allow my upper torso to fall downward, grab the towel and there will be some bounce back to help me stand up straight. Sadly what I did not calculate was the fact that my upper torso was larger the width of the bathroom. My head skidded to a rapid halt as my wet rear end wedged itself against the wall. Like any human I pulled the opposite direction to which I had been wedged, however, as I pushed away from the wall I applied pressure to my crushed toe. This caused an immediate recoil of my legs. At this point with my full body weight being gravities bitch I wedged myself between my two bathroom walls.

I am sure I could have been a bitch and called out for my woman. However, I opted for more manly and dignified option of just hanging there. I again tried to use my legs to move me out my reverse Chinese body trap, however, I just could not apply any leverage with my broken toe and because my back was already being forced into the position of a 20 year old sway back horse, I couldn’t arch my back to reduce my girth between the walls. What I settled for a masterful design of physics and fluid dynamics. That is to say that I allowed my wet and slippery butt to succumb to painfully slow force of gravity and slide down the wall.