Hammer and Nails

*Bang*

 *Bang*

*Thump.*

Ouch. I'd done it again. The sixteen penny rink-shank nail previously held steady by my ever so steady hand, was now abandoned—left to fall two stories down to the concrete reality of concrete patio below as I pulled my throbbing left thumb nearer to my face for a closer examination. Throbbing wildly back and forth in synchronization with my pounding heart while systematically gracing between deep lavender, dark red, and pale white colors, my thumb emphatically protested; openly opposing its lot of opposability.

Inspecting my thumb for signs of intolerable stress as this was not the first time my hammer had struck my thumb in such a fashion, I realized that this was the third time this morning that I had inflicted such pain upon my thumb, a notion that worried me further as I discovered a stress line growing on my nail. I also realized that all three times thus far, my left thumb had been the blunt of my hammer’s fierce kinetic energy—a perfect 3-0 record. How very odd…

Peanut Gallery Detour: I am undecided pertaining to word choice at this point, which is not a position that I find myself in often. To say that the sudden consciousness my left thumb’s sudden stroke of terrible luck puzzled me, might be slight embellishment, as my mind was still at least half-heartedly focused upon the stout pain which had engulfed my thumb and began to spread down toward my wrist by this time. To simply shake the following thoughts away as never having occurred, however, would be terribly uninteresting and underly dramatic, almost like reading a 12 page synopsis regarding the function of chicken bouillon cubes. Yeah, drama is my weakness…

Plagued with incredulousness, I wondered in speculative awe as to why my poor left thumb was the lone one of two to suffer the hammering punishment dealt by a hammer. Calculating the mathematical odds, I concluded that the odds of my left thumb being hit all three consecutive times was 12.5%, or about 1 out of 8 odds. For you mathematically deficient, that’s a so called ‘fat chance’, a find that was all the more perplexing.


Slightly bothered by life's great mysteries, I stared off into the far reaches of the front yard, searching for the door of wisdom. After a long pause, I blinked and checked my phone and realized that I had been staring blankly at a tree for two minutes. Rats. Realizing that I was still a few brain cells short of an answer, I terminated my search and shrugged off the overwhelming grasp of mystery, remembering all at once that I was still standing on the roof of a tall house and my task was still to fasten trim to the edge of the eaves.

*sigh*

I unimaginatively selected another nail from the box of screws (don’t ask) with my left hand and reaching for the hammer with my right…

…the door of wisdom opened unto me and enlightenment imparted: You're right-handed stupid. There, standing atop wooden shingles and under both the fierce Oklahoma sun and the stark weight of realization, I realized that my right thumb was far too busy being opposable and holding a hammer to be bothered by being hit with it. My right thumb’s mathematical odds of being hit: 0% , 0 out of 10, and, for you knuckleheads out there, absolutely none.

*facepalm*

Slightly worried about the affect the sun was seemingly dealing to my intellectual prowess’s former glory, I closed my eyes…

…and immediately began to wonder why it was so dark inside my eyelids.