Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Today I would like to say a few words about “black eyes”. I know…I know…Hawley, what the hell have you done to yourself now. Before you jump to any unwarranted conclusions, let me just say…OK fine…I have a black eye…so what…shut up.
Anyway! Having had reason to contemplate black eyes lately, I have come to the conclusion that there is no “good” way to get a black eye. Regardless of the circumstances, almost without exception, everyone who sees you will immediately draw the same conclusion…Whoa…Dude…Who kicked your ass? You could have gotten it while racing through a minefield to catch a nun holding an orphan who was falling into a pile of broken glass and medical waste and everyone will still assume you got drunk in a bar and someone went to town on your face with a pool cue. No one ever says “Wow…he must have been working on a violent math problem” or “he must have bumped his eye on his microscope while searching for a cure for cancer”. The real irony is that I have only seen one black eye from fighting in my whole life and that guy was a jug head! Let's face it, I haven't been in many fights in my life but it seems to me that it’s hard enough just to make contact with the other person let alone the orbit of the eye.
If there is one good thing about my situation, it's that mine occurred on the first of nine days off in a row. It has had time to go from a swollen purple mass to a fading black shadow under the eye. I have to go to work tomorrow so I can look forward to running into a whole new batch of morons who will make some crack about fighting. It’ll go something like this…”How’d you get the shiner…Rocky?” “I bumped it on your wife’s pelvic bone, jackass. Now shut up and fly the damn plane!” …‘Chris Hawley, please report to the chief pilots office’
OK, so the real story goes like this. I was in this biker bar in Yuma workin’ on a math problem related to my cancer research when the fat Billy Bob drops this nun from the bar onto a pile …(just kidding)
Of course it happened while working on the house. We were having a garage door installed on Tuesday and I had to get some drywall up before they installed it. Now, if you have never worked with drywall, it is a very heavy material. It's crushed Gypsum between two sheets of paper. Gupsum is like a rock hense the brand name SheetRock. I can manhandle a 4’x8’ sheet of ½” plywood but, the same size of drywall requires a bit of help. Now imagine trying to lift this to a ten-foot ceiling. Ordinarily, I would rent a drywall lift for the day, but I was only putting up four pieces. And, after all, I had Lorna to help. (Insert laughter here) After some unsuccessful experimentation, I developed a way to lift the sheet to the ceiling with rope. When dry walling a ceiling, you need to hold the panel to the ceiling with supports. I built three “T” supports by attaching a 4 foot 1”x4” to the end of a ten foot 2”x2” to do the job. They worked great EXCEPT … The second panel we lifted into place was 4’x12’ and went up smoothly until I started installing the T supports. After installing a T at each end, I positioned the middle T. When I pushed up on the middle, it loosened one of the other Ts. I had my back to the T that let go but Lorna, my dedicated helper, was holding the ropes that held the drywall in place and she saw the T starting to fall and, of course, called “Look Out”.
Now, this brings up one of life’s little conundrums. When an object is heading toward a person and collision is eminent, we are faced with the choice to do nothing and let them get hit in a relatively benign fashion, or call out and draw the most vulnerable part of the body to the collision. Let’s face it. (No pun intended) When someone hollers out, we have an uncontrollable response to look. Something is falling and we all yell “Heads Up”. How stupid is that? It’s like yelling “Hey, there’s a train coming, everybody get on the track to get a good view.” Of course, there’s usually little time to consciously make the decision. It’s reflex. “Quick…Chris…Catch that wood with your left eye”…good job.
Lorna called out, I turned, and was hit by the worst part of the T. The 2” edge of the ten-foot support hit me across the left edge of my eye. By the time I bent down with my hands holding my face, it had already started to swell. I looked up to ask Lorna if I was bleeding and she said “Whoa!” In an hour, it was swollen above and below the eye and was turning from red to purple. The next day Lorna woke up and said “Oh Boy!” It was full on Black by then. It is interesting how you can get hit in one spot and you get black and blue somewhere else. Bump your knee and your ear turns blue!
To her credit, I have to be thankful that Lorna resisted her normal urge to come to my aid. The only thing worse than getting clobbered by the wooden support would have been getting clobbered and then having Lorna let go of the ropes and having the 12’ section of drywall come crashing down on me. Somebody call the Darwin awards!
Anyway! Having had reason to contemplate black eyes lately, I have come to the conclusion that there is no “good” way to get a black eye. Regardless of the circumstances, almost without exception, everyone who sees you will immediately draw the same conclusion…Whoa…Dude…Who kicked your ass? You could have gotten it while racing through a minefield to catch a nun holding an orphan who was falling into a pile of broken glass and medical waste and everyone will still assume you got drunk in a bar and someone went to town on your face with a pool cue. No one ever says “Wow…he must have been working on a violent math problem” or “he must have bumped his eye on his microscope while searching for a cure for cancer”. The real irony is that I have only seen one black eye from fighting in my whole life and that guy was a jug head! Let's face it, I haven't been in many fights in my life but it seems to me that it’s hard enough just to make contact with the other person let alone the orbit of the eye.
If there is one good thing about my situation, it's that mine occurred on the first of nine days off in a row. It has had time to go from a swollen purple mass to a fading black shadow under the eye. I have to go to work tomorrow so I can look forward to running into a whole new batch of morons who will make some crack about fighting. It’ll go something like this…”How’d you get the shiner…Rocky?” “I bumped it on your wife’s pelvic bone, jackass. Now shut up and fly the damn plane!” …‘Chris Hawley, please report to the chief pilots office’
OK, so the real story goes like this. I was in this biker bar in Yuma workin’ on a math problem related to my cancer research when the fat Billy Bob drops this nun from the bar onto a pile …(just kidding)
Of course it happened while working on the house. We were having a garage door installed on Tuesday and I had to get some drywall up before they installed it. Now, if you have never worked with drywall, it is a very heavy material. It's crushed Gypsum between two sheets of paper. Gupsum is like a rock hense the brand name SheetRock. I can manhandle a 4’x8’ sheet of ½” plywood but, the same size of drywall requires a bit of help. Now imagine trying to lift this to a ten-foot ceiling. Ordinarily, I would rent a drywall lift for the day, but I was only putting up four pieces. And, after all, I had Lorna to help. (Insert laughter here) After some unsuccessful experimentation, I developed a way to lift the sheet to the ceiling with rope. When dry walling a ceiling, you need to hold the panel to the ceiling with supports. I built three “T” supports by attaching a 4 foot 1”x4” to the end of a ten foot 2”x2” to do the job. They worked great EXCEPT … The second panel we lifted into place was 4’x12’ and went up smoothly until I started installing the T supports. After installing a T at each end, I positioned the middle T. When I pushed up on the middle, it loosened one of the other Ts. I had my back to the T that let go but Lorna, my dedicated helper, was holding the ropes that held the drywall in place and she saw the T starting to fall and, of course, called “Look Out”.
Now, this brings up one of life’s little conundrums. When an object is heading toward a person and collision is eminent, we are faced with the choice to do nothing and let them get hit in a relatively benign fashion, or call out and draw the most vulnerable part of the body to the collision. Let’s face it. (No pun intended) When someone hollers out, we have an uncontrollable response to look. Something is falling and we all yell “Heads Up”. How stupid is that? It’s like yelling “Hey, there’s a train coming, everybody get on the track to get a good view.” Of course, there’s usually little time to consciously make the decision. It’s reflex. “Quick…Chris…Catch that wood with your left eye”…good job.
Lorna called out, I turned, and was hit by the worst part of the T. The 2” edge of the ten-foot support hit me across the left edge of my eye. By the time I bent down with my hands holding my face, it had already started to swell. I looked up to ask Lorna if I was bleeding and she said “Whoa!” In an hour, it was swollen above and below the eye and was turning from red to purple. The next day Lorna woke up and said “Oh Boy!” It was full on Black by then. It is interesting how you can get hit in one spot and you get black and blue somewhere else. Bump your knee and your ear turns blue!
To her credit, I have to be thankful that Lorna resisted her normal urge to come to my aid. The only thing worse than getting clobbered by the wooden support would have been getting clobbered and then having Lorna let go of the ropes and having the 12’ section of drywall come crashing down on me. Somebody call the Darwin awards!
// posted by Chris @ Wednesday, August 25, 2004
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