A conversation with my eldest son, who recently entered the trades, but after hearing that he had sliced his thumb open while at work …
Welcome to the club, kid. I have told this story dozens of times, and now it is your turn to hear it.
Fifteen or so years ago, when I worked for the dry cleaners, I flew out to Las Vegas for a big annual convention. In the middle of one of the days, I walked outside to the atrium to have a smoke. As I was sitting there, an older gentleman approached me and asked if I had a lighter.
I did, so I handed it to him. He looked just like Sam Elliott.
You might too young to know who that is, but he is a Hollywood actor (think gray-haired cowboy with a big gray mustache), and as he lit his cigarette, he looked me up and down and handed me back my lighter. I was wearing black slacks and a button-up shirt and my work boots (the only shoes I owned at the time).
He asked me with a smile on his face, “You a maintenance guy?” I said yes and laughed, knowing the reason that I was at the convention was not for “maintenance” but rather that the manufacturers that we bought our equipment from shipped me out there to help sell their products to other dry cleaners.
I thought about my outfit and asked him, “Was it my boots that gave it away?” He leaned in and said, “No, son, it’s your hands. They are all f’d up like mine.”
We finished our smokes and went back in, and that was it.
Now, many years later when I look at my hands, and all the scars and calluses, busted knuckles and the split fingernails that will never grow right again without breaking, I often think about that seasoned old timer and how some of us forge our journey. I do not dwell on the decade I spent grinding in restaurants getting burnt and cut and learning nor the decade doing Industrial maintenance turning my hands into the claws that they are today.
I prefer to focus instead on how these old hands put a roof over you and your siblings’ heads and food in your bellies. How they helped your mom become a nurse and all the other good that we have had. It will always be worth it for me.
Even though I can no longer do fine solder work anymore, and some days can’t write very legibly, these hands and all the marks on them give me character. Today, you earned some of your own.
I am proud of you for taking risks. However, I ask that you save a little bit for later. Time goes by faster than you think. While shit will sometimes happen, please try always to be as safe as you can. Love you, son. Heal up soon and keep up the good work.
(It has now been a few months since then, and he is recovering well after a minor surgery and rehab.)
