When I was a freshman (VTCC), I made the mistake of using a table saw in the Old High School Building (then the home of freshman & sophomore Arch design labs), without any safety guard or training. Worse, there was no supervision.

I all but cut off the first joint of my right thumb, was rushed to Roanoke Memorial Hospital (in the Hoy Funeral Home hearse, pre-EMS), and the thumb was saved. It survives to this day with the mid-joint fused and the digit now at about 3/4-size.

It cleared me from any further active participation in the VTCC, which I’d already decided to leave after the first year, so I should have been grateful. But in the nearly six months the thumb was in a cast nearly to my elbow, with the thumb pinned together, its mere presence became a constant irritant, explaining what had happened.

I discovered a core facet of human nature: People don’t want to know what happened as much as they want to share a similar experience, and more often than not, they want to one-up you. Everyone I met who inquired had to have a story to top mine.

No different was a guy who sat down to lunch next to me at (then) Little Doc’s one afternoon. No sooner was I into explaining my accident when he interrupted with, “That’s nothin’. My brother got his hand bit off by a pig.”

I was set free. From that day forward, until the cast was removed, whenever anyone asked me what had happened, I told them I’d had my thumb bitten off by a pig. Nobody could beat that.

previously posted 3/1/21 and before


[Post edited by PhotoHokieNC at 11/20/2021 3:24PM]