I was working on the model this afternoon cutting little dado joints to connect the deck beams to the crosspieces.  You saw a tiny groove and then use an exacto blade to carve out the extra wood between the cuts (the role that you would use a chisel for on full scale).  I have done this hundreds of times and occasionally there is an accident.

Sure enough the blade slips through the wood and slices a cut on the top of my left thumb.  Not particularly deep but bloody. Cannot save the cross beam because it is covered in blood.

So I rinse it off and clamp it with a paper towel.  These days, of course, it takes a bit longer for the blood to stop.  I put a couple of bandaids on then go  back to work… but my left hand turned to me and seemed to say, could you not once let me hold the knife and let that hand on the other side of your body hold the wood?

This is true.  It is as if I have two children and favour the one over the other.  The right hand seldom has to take a risk.

If there is a possibility of a live wire I send in the left hand to touch.  If I am drilling a hole while requiring a small piece to be held, the drill is in my right and my poor left hand is holding the scrap.

Over the years my left hand has experienced hundreds of little scrapes and cuts but as I explained to lefty, if you look at my hands the more serious cuts and scars are on my right.

Grabbing for a barb wire fence to climb over on Uncle Ken’s farm produced a visit to the hospital and a scar an inch long with 8 stitches.  Lefty countered with the scar on my left wrist where I cut myself working on the pool hoses in Oakville, where granted, the box cutter was in my right hand, that one required 12 stitches.

Then the right hand came into the conversation and closed the argument by pointing out that as the dominant hand it is like the older brother in a Royal hierarchy.  In other words get over it lefty, you will always be the one holding the tiny piece of wood while I take a radial tool to mold it.

Pat tells me I should buy Lefty a chain mail glove like butchers use.

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