Jacking

Summers in high school and college I spent working construction. One job was on a crew clearing a right-of-way through a forest (for a sewer, if you must know.) Waiting to buck up (ie, chop off the limbs, then cut the tree into lengths with a prodigious chain saw) the big Doug firs that the CAT driver pushed down, I obsessively sharpened my honkin' double-edged axe. Having achieved surgical sharpness, I'd occasionally use it to whittle, a not particularly bright idea, given the unwieldy size of the axe.

And so it was that I zipped the axe, held in my right hand, dangerously by my left thumb, wrapped as it was around the object d' whittle. Hmm, I thought. Guy could cut himself doing something like that. So I did it again. And did. Got the extensor pollicus longus tendon, although not all the way through.

I consider it one of the stupider (although less consequential) things I've done; but had I been a Republican Congressman, it'd been even worse. In that case, I'd have cut my thumb on the first swipe, looked at it, and as the blood flowed (pretty briskly, as I recall), I'd have said, "Hmm," and DONE IT AGAIN.

On a belated note, it seems John McCain is getting around to figuring out his economic policies. Just in the nick of time.