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Dane Allred’s Rules of Engagement
Spading Myself
Part Two
So when I weed, it is with a passion and energy of someone that knows it is time to get this done, and done right, and get on to other stuff. I am an intense weeder.
So there I sat in the long weeds which have had three years to grow extra deep roots. I am sitting on the ground with my spading pitchfork in my left hand, stabbing at the ground furiously and pulling the offending plants out with my right hand.
Except when they won't come out.
This weeding system works well when the plants are coming out easily. There is a problem if the weed refuses to be pulled out on the first try. This is when I usually take the top of the noxious weed in my hand, and grabbing it firmly, stab yet again with the sharpened tool of steel.
It usually works. The roots get loose and the weed comes out. But not this time.
I stabbed a little too close to my hand.
This is usually not a problem, since the blade often deflects off my hand and goes into the ground.
I was stabbing the ground so hard because the weeds were so stubborn that the blade stabbed my hand instead.
The outer tine of the pitchfork went into my right hand just above my right thumb, almost to my wrist. The blade was so sharp that it sped right under the skin and then emerged from the first joint of my thumb. Where the last knuckle of the thumb bends in, I now had a sharp steel blade sticking out of my hand about four inches.
I had really stabbed hard.
It hadn't really hurt, which I have found from extensive personal experience is usually the case with a severe injury. It did sting a bit, and the cut was clean - no blood was coming out.
In fact, the blade was firmly entrenched in my hand and as I gently tried to pull and push it a bit, my skin only moved with it. There was no blood channel like in fencing swords to allow blood to escape, and allow the stabber to extricate his blade from the stabee.
I held the blade and my hand up to the open air and admired the clean incision. I looked like one of those Freddy Krueger movies, except the blade wasn't attached to my glove; it was running through my thumb.
Time seems to stand still in these kinds of moments. I remember several different and bizarre kinds of thoughts.
Being a performer at heart and knowing I had an opening night to face later, the first words I muttered were not curses or shouts of pain. They were "Crap, I have a show tonight."
The next phrase emerged after I examined the sliced skin near my wrist. I said out loud, "Well, that only looks like 5 or 6 stitches." I had enough hands-on (!) sewing experience to know how many stitches the doctor would use.
Then two conflicting thoughts entered my mind, and I swear this is what actually happened next. I was wondering about the emergency room, but another thought crossed my mind immediately. There was going to be a wedding in this yard next month. The wheelbarrow was still sitting on the lawn, and I realized I would probably not get back to weeding for a few days. I knew I would forget to move the wheelbarrow and it would leave a big yellow mark right in the middle of the lawn.
That simply would not do. I tucked the handle of the spading pitchfork under my arm, with the blade still protruding from my hand. It was a little painful, but I endured so I could get that stupid wheelbarrow off the lawn.
I took the two handles of the wheelbarrow and lifted, a little painfully, and moved it off the lawn to the weedy patch. I kid you not. I was more worried about the lawn at this moment than the wound.
Then the other thought crowded back. I knew that the emergency room people would probably not want me to pull the tines of the pitchfork back through my hand as it would get infected. But I also knew that they would probably cut the tine off and slide it out the front of my hand. This would destroy a perfectly good spading pitchfork. I chose infection over a ruined tool.
I also had another thought as I walked over to the cement step which lead up to the patio. I could see myself arriving at the emergency room and proudly waving my arm above me and saying, "I got a potato pitchfork stuck in my hand! Can you get it out?
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