Seriously, Dad!?!?!

My dad, though a great do-it-yourself type of guy, is horribly accident prone.

One tradition that was born of all my dad’s do-it-yourself projects is one that most of us probably wish wasn’t a tradition, actually, we probably wish it didn’t exist at all. I don’t remember the actual incident that started it, but it started when my sister and I were quite young, and has continued at least annually ever since. The tradition? Well, that would be the one where my dad has a “minor” accident and ends up in the emergency room. There you have it, folks, our tradition is one of trips to the ER with my dad. I think the Grande Ronde Hospital should name its Emergency Department after him!

You have the simple injuries like hitting your knee with a chainsaw, to the more complicated ones like twisting your ankle chasing the cat in the yard resulting in such significant ligament and tendon damage you end up having surgery with a specialist in Vancouver. Let’s see, there was the year he broke his collarbone (two years in a row, actually) playing softball, one year he drilled his palm with a dove-tail drill bit, countless stitches, multiple bandages, and many braces.

The biggest one that is the most clear in my mind is the year he blew up the burning barrell and spent two weeks in the hospital in isolation with severe burns. That was the year that he tore the back porch off our house in La Grande to put an addition on. I remember all his friends coming over to work on the re-model while he was in the hospital and recovering. I think I was probably only 9 or 10, I don’t remember for sure.

Today, Dad was working in his shop, as usual, and he was working on the joiner.  I did ask what the joiner was, and I was given a brief lesson. A joiner is similar to a planer, but rather than make two surfaces of wood parallel like a planer, the joiner actually trims curves and warps off flat wood surfaces which can then be used in the planer to make a completely flat piece of wood to work with.

Anyway, back to the story.  Apparently his left pinky finger and the joiner decided to have a little disagreement.  Any guesses which one won?

Betts Gene Strikes Again!

As with any injury, the bandaging always makes it look way worse than it actually is.  He doesn’t have stitches, but has some sort of special gel-bandage to help it heal.  I do feel a *tad* guilty, though, because he’s been working on a project I asked him to make.  I thought at some point this whole “injuring yourself in the middle of a project” thing he has would get old and he would stop doing it, but it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop any time soon!