Severe Injury

There was a painting I saw at a garage sale a long time ago that I can't get out of my mind. The guy in the folding lawn chair wearing the Hawaii shirt and holding the Colt 45 beer can wanted two hundred dollars for it, which seemed like a good deal since it was signed by the artist, or at least it was signed by somebody, and besides, it came with a frame made out of real wood. But, I didn't buy it because it wasn't painted by anybody famous and if I remember correctly, it wasn't really very good. And I didn't have any money. Anyway, the painting looked sort of cartoonish, but even so, that image on that painting stuck with me for years and years.

The painting was of a fifty-ish year old guy working in a forge or maybe he was working in a blacksmith shop, and now that I think about it, I can't tell you the difference between the two. A forge and a blacksmith shop look the same in movies and paintings. The edges of the shop were cast in such poor light it was hard to see anything more than dark gray shadows, but the middle of the shop was brightly lit by an orange-red forge fire. In the man's meaty right paw was a big hammer raised high and ready to strike, and in his left was a big pair of long-handled pliers holding a hot piece of metal that was pressed against an anvil. I don't know what he was suppose to be making out of that white-hot hunk of metal, but it seemed to be giving him trouble because he was sweating and had an ugly grimace on his face. Sparks and red hot smoke wafted up from the forge and cast a hell-fire glow on the anvil and on the man's face and arms.

I didn't think about it at the time, but now I wonder if the hair on the guy's arms was burned off by the heat from the forge. I do that sometimes. Yesterday for instance, I was trying to solder a piece of copper pipe so I fired up my propane torch to heat the pipe and melt the solder. I was holding the pipe in my left hand and the torch in my right and, for some reason I didn't consider how far that torch can throw a flame before I did my Bob Vila impression with the torch.  I was sweating, just like the guy in the painting, and I had an evil grimace on my face, just like the guy in the paining.  Unlike the guy in the painting, my left forearm wandered in between the pipe and the torch and I burned all the hair off my arm with that %$#@ing torch. Twice.

That was yesterday. Today, I am comparing my left arm with my right and trying to decide which is best. The left one still smells funny and is nearly hair free from wrist to armpit. The right one is hairy but it isn't heat blistered.

I ran 6 miles today, it felt great. Best run in a year. Great run. Super run. To be fair, it wasn't a fast run. A guy with a limp wearing a “I just turned 70” t-shirt passed me, which I thought was pretty rude, since it's obvious to anybody with half a brain that my left arm was recently injured in an industrial forge and/or propane torch accident. I tried to pace the guy, but he dropped me after a hundred yards or so. Those septuagenarian runners are so arrogant.

IM Whistler 29 weeks, 5 days, 12 hours, 50 minutes, 55 seconds to go. Plus or minus.