Last month, I was helping customize some closets in my daughter’s first house. My work crew was comprised of several paramedics and nurses that work at the same hospital that my daughter works at. I was supposed to be supervising, but I have never been the sort to stand back and watch other people work. As I reached for the pneumatic nail gun to secure one of the shelves, I made the comment, “Don’t tell Gene that I was using power tools. I’m not allowed to use them.”
There was a brief pause before someone asked, “Okay, now we need to know the story behind that statement.” My reply was, “All I’m saying is that it involved a weed whacker and the remains of a tennis shoe.” The room erupted in laughter.
As I think back to the event, it started like many “oopses” have in my past. I got a bright idea and I acted on it. The thing is, I don’t always think things through before jumping into a new task. On this day, I had decided to help Gene out by mowing and trimming the yard. While I had plenty of experience with mowing, Gene had always done the trimming. But there was a trimmer, an electrical cord, and only one button . . . how hard could it be?
Things went pretty well at the start, but we had a very large yard and a lot of fencing, so the trimming was taking a while. And my arms got tired. Well one thing led to another, and when I dropped my arms to give them a rest, I sort of forgot to let go of the button. The result was that I cut the toe off of my tennis shoe. This did get my attention as I saw my toes hanging out of what was once a very nice shoe. But in my defense, I did not require medical attention, and I did manage to miss cutting off my toes. So I’m thinking that the punishment of banning me from using ALL power tools for life was a bit severe. But Gene sleeps better.
And I would like to point out that they now sell tennis shoes without toes, so maybe I was a trend setter!