The Pocono Chainsaw Massacre

We were sitting around comparing scars the other day and I placed my left hand in the center of the table. "Here's a good one." I said.

Across the second knuckle of my index finger is a jagged webwork of scar tissue. It looks like the fractures of a shattered glass. "I got this one from a chainsaw." I bragged.

Comments like, "Wow!" or "yecch!" circulated around the table. They all leaned forward for a better look, one of the women grabbing my hand, moving it in the light to see the jumble of jagged scars more easily. I squeezed her hand, winked at her and said, "Later, Baby." She laughed and set my hand firmly back on the table. I guess some women don't find scars sexy.

Before anyone else could up the ante with a cooler scar I said, "I have a story that goes with this one." Someone muttered, "Oh, what a surprise." Thus encouraged I dove in:

Back when I was a salesman I used to blow days off and do guy stuff around the house. It was easy to do because I was a super-duper salesman, I had loyal customers and my bosses were total idiots. So I was in my garage, cutting some decorative birch logs for the fireplace. (An elderly neighbor's tree was damaged in a recent storm and I had cut it down and cleaned it up for her.) I needed the logs to be in two foot sections and I was dealing with pieces a little over three feet long. They were awkward to control.

Finally I held one end of a log to my workbench with my left hand. The other end of the log was hanging over the edge of the bench. I had a running chainsaw in my right hand. I was going to cut about ten inches off of this piece -- approximately 18 inches from my left hand. When I brought the chainsaw in contact with the wood it must have hit a knot and faster than I knew what was happening, the spinning chain bounced on the knot and skipped along the surface of the wood, chewing up two of the knuckles of my left hand.

"Shit!" I said. "How am I going to explain this to my boss? I'm supposed to be working today." No kidding. THAT was how dedicated I was.

I flipped the chainsaw kill switch with my right thumb and set it on the floor... noting the spray of blood on the clean concrete... wondering if it would come out. The air in the garage was blue with 2-cycle exhaust. I hadn't looked at my hand yet.

When I did it was still clutching the log. I was surprised at how little pain there was. (I have to say here that shock is a wonderful thing. It allows you to function enough to get help when you are ass deep in guy stuff.) I flexed my hand to see how badly it was damaged. When I straightened my fingers my index finger remained bent downward at a 45 degree angle. When I looked closer I saw a ragged hole in the skin and white knuckle bone. It was actually bleeding very little.

I tried to straighten the finger using my other hand but there was a weird tension pulling the finger downward. I found out later I had severed the tendons on the top of my finger and the bottom tendons were pulling it into the bent position.

Part of my brain was saying, "Cool!" and part of my brain was saying, "Oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man... oh, man..."

UP NEXT: The Emergency Room