AmusedFriend: “Pablo! How’d you cut your finger off?
PVW: “Lost it to a Cayman.”
AmusedFriend: “As in the Islander or the Miniature Alligator?”
PVW: “Perhaps both.”
AmusedFriend: “Really! How’d you cut your finger off?”
PVW: “Evading machete attack along the Mekong Delta.”
AmusedFriend: “No really Paul, how’d you cut your finger off?”
PVW: “Unpayed debts to P-Lo”
AmusedFriend: “Who is P-Lo?”
PVW: “Nancy Pelosi”
AmusedFriend: “C’mon. Tell the Truth”
PVW: “The Japanese Yakuza caught me stealing.”
AmusedFriend: “Stop it. Tell me, what happened.”
PVW: OK fine…
The true story of how I cut my finger off is hilarious albeit highly embarrassing.
But it must be told.
Everyone has an uncle, grandfather or some random acquaintance whose wood working career was marred, irrevocably, by some kind of mishap.
For many a Deltonian, I’m that guy.
I was coming off of Dr. Pepper induced caffeine high after lunch.
My last class of the day, Wood Shop, was taught by the lovable Mr. Van Riper, whose endearing speech impediment caused him pronounce his own name, “Mistah Van Wiper.”
During wood shop, I fashioned a cutting board that I intended to give to my Dad as a Christmas present.
Ironically, the name of the machine I was using, a “Jointer”, foreshadowed what was about to happen.
While I leveled the cutting board across the Jointer, the wood bounced, my hand whizzed into the machina and cut off the tip of my index finger.
Shocked, I held my hands up in front of my face.
My first thought demonstrated my priorities in life.
“Left? …Right?… It’s my Left Finger. Good. I can still Team Rope.”
Though horrified, I felt no pain. The shock slash adrenaline kept it from hurting.
I felt an unescapable sense of being fully alive.
I guess if my childhood taught me anything, it’s that the only cure for trauma is more trauma.
My next thought was, “I’m in desperate need of medical attention.”
I clutched my finger, shuffled past a confused Van Riper and hustled straight to Dick Bagby’s office.
Bagby was the school’s Vice-Principal, auto shop teacher and in his spare time, a volunteer fireman.
He was, unequivocally, the most beloved staff member at Delta High.
I march into Bagby’s office and show him my mangled finger.
He calmy told me to sit down and call my father. He’d dispatch the Clarksburg Fire Department.
I call my Dad’s office.
His secretary, Sugar, answered the phone.
“What do you want, Paul?” she asked.
I tell her the truth.
She doesn’t believe me.
“Your Dad is in a meeting,” Sugar asserted.
“It’s an emergency,” I argue.
“Ya, your dad’s in a meeting.”
All the blood rushes to my head and I yell at her, “It’s an emergency you stupid…..”
Then everything went black.
When I came to, I was staring at the ceiling of Dick Bagby’s office, strapped to a gurney and on oxygen.
Evidently, while yelling at my Dad’s retarded secretary, I passed out from the blood loss, hit my head on Bagby’s desk and knocked myself out.
While incapacitated, Clarksburg FD arrived and tended to my medical needs.
Minutes later, my sister ran into Bagby’s office teary eyed.
Not wanting her to see me in my sad, pathetic state, I ask a fireman, “Will someone get her out of here? PLEASE!!”
The firemen wheeled me out of Delta and loaded me into an ambulance.
For the second time, during my otherwise unremarkable High School career, I’d captured Delta’s complete attention.
Eventually, my old man arrived.
He seemed oddly amused at my predicament.
I spent the night in the hospital hopped up on Fentanyl.
Upon discharge, my doctor prescribed me pain meds.
Percocet and Vicodin.
My Dad commandeered the pills.
He told me, “Only ask for these when you feel pain.”
Trying to be tough, I only asked twice.
The second time, he refused me.
“They’re addictive,” my Dad advised.
Thinking he deprived me of the meds for my well-being, I didn’t question it, sucked it up and gutted through the pain.
Years later, I found out that my father, ever the businessman, resold the pills to members of
his extended network of associates.
Allegedly, once the pills were secured, a bidding war ensued and the Vikes and Percadoodles
were off’d to the highest bidder.
Lol.
*****
Aside from the occasional cold weather phantom limb pain, having ¾ of an index finger hasn’t hindered me in any way.
I can still type. Voila.
I can still play the piano.
My only limitation is buttoning cuffs on dress shirts, which now I have a wife for….
But losing a fingertip wasn’t without its silver lining.
So scared that someone with my family’s resources would sue them for the accident, the River-Delta School District felt forced to give me a free pass, academically, for the remainder of my high school existence.
I could do whatever I wanted, Carte Blanche, and they’d pass me.
This meant that two years later, despite severe intellectual limitations, California State University at Fresno admitted me with open arms.
Moral?
Whether it’s 2004 or 2024, the best way to navigate the treacherous hallways of American Academia is to cut off an appendage.