The Summer of '85

I had just graduated from high school and looking forward to attending IBC in the Fall. I was working my job at the Piccadilly Restaurant at the corner of Price and Southern. I was a dishwasher and had been working there for about a year. I was at the front of the machine loading the dirty dishes into racks to be run through the machine. We’d have dishes come back chipped or stress fractured and we’d break them and throw them away but not always in that order. Some coffee mugs were so weak that we could pull them apart with our hands with ease. What happened next was one of stupidity. I was expecting to get cut. I always had cuts on my hand but I never expected to injure myself as much as I did.

While at the front of the machine, a coffee cup came through that looked weak but when I tried to pull it apart before I threw it away it stayed together. Normally, we’d throw it in the garbage and use the back end of a table knife to break it. I started to do that but then thought, “no, I can do it.” So, I pulled with all my might and the coffee cup came apart. What I didn’t realize right away was that the coffee cup took a part of two of my fingers with it. When I looked at my hands, I expected to see a cut or two but not a lot of blood. 

I asked my friend a few feet away to grab a cloth napkin for me and I clenched my fist and had another friend drive me to the hospital about a mile down the road. I found out that I had removed the fingerprints from the middle two fingers on my left hand down to the bone but I miraculously missed all muscle and tendons.  A couple days later I was in the hospital having out-patient skin-graft surgery where they took a 2 inch by 3 inch patch out of my left thigh to replace what I was missing in my fingers.

The surgery forced me to be laid up at home inside for about four to six weeks because they didn’t want my skin graft to dry out. You can only watch so many hours of TV a day before getting bored. I gave my mom some money and asked her to buy me an electronic chessboard. I still have it to this day. I played 100+ games on that thing and won only 6 but it really improved my chess game.

By the end of my “house arrest,” I was coloring, doing puzzles, and becoming stir-crazy. I was finally able to get out, go back to work, and show up for TCA’s soccer practice in August even though I had graduated. 

As a side note: as the summer was ending and I was getting ready for college to start, my wife was turning 4 years old. Sounds kind of creepy when you put it that way but our age difference has been a benefit to both of us. She’s mature for her age and I’m not. It’s a good balance.