Old Wounds

There it is. An old wound. Quiescent for months or years or even decades, once triggered they can change a life or change an outlook or change plans.

In the scheme of things this old wound is quite minor. Within the last twenty one years the only indication anything happened was a little pucker scar on the tip of my right index finger. Not even hundreds of thousands of keystrokes had bothered it.

In the summer of 1979 I could regularly be found wandering the woods or at a friend's farm. Well, on this particularly mild late summer night, my friend and I decided to make Molotov Cocktails and throw them at a pile of rocks. All went well until one of mine didn't catch on fire.

After waiting a little while we investigated. The bottle had fallen short and seemingly landed gently in the freshly plowed field that abutted the rock pile. I reached down to retrieve the bottle and quickly discovered it had indeed broken. Pain was instantaneous. It was not a bottle I retrieved, but several shards of glass embedded in a very bloody finger.

After a few swear words, alcohol, tweezers and a band-aid it was believed all was well. A few years later my finger started to itch. After several days of this a small piece of glass broke through. There was no blood and little pain, just a minute shard of glass.

What I believed to be the last piece came out when I was in college as I washed the dishes. As before it was an itch and after a few days a piece of glass pokes out.

Now, decades later, it is hurting. This is not without prompting. A great deal of my time this long Thanksgiving weekend was spent cleaning my garage, arranging tools, changing Athena's oil and working on my project motorcycle. Yes, muscles are burning. Yes, joints are a little painful.

This is new. An irritated old injury. It would be easy to stop working on my project bike or pay someone to change my bike's oil. That will simply not happen. This old wound will not stop what I enjoy doing.

Perhaps this same mode of attack could be used with other old wounds. Maybe.