This is the last installment of 3 to introduce myself to you. If you are coming from the former home at blogger I thank you for following along with me. If you just found me welcome aboard.
Who is Johnny part II
First published on 19 January 2015 @yearofthejohnny.blogspot.com
Cheers, I hope everyone is well, this fine Martin Luther King Day.
So…I was trying to rush and finish up a job on a Wednesday night. I only had to install new flooring in the closet in the foyer and put the downstairs of this house back .together. My phone’s clock was reading 8:30. I would never finish before 10;30 pm. I cleaned up and went home. Thursday would be a great day. A quick two hour morning and install 10 square feet of hardwood, sweep and clean, put rooms back together and get paid.
The universe had other plans for Johnny that fine spring morning. My workout was great that morning. It was warm outside. I ran to the gym, did my workout, and ran back to the warehouse to get my truck and go to work.
The sun was shining. The first cut I had to make was a little L-shaped cut on an 18-inch piece of oak flooring. There was a tiny crack all the way through the wood that I failed to see, but the table saw found immediately. It sucked the wood in fast almost to my hand and then it kicked back. And then my the wood and my hand were slammed down on top of the blade. It didn’t hurt. I felt hot. I didn’t see blood. I was fine. I bent down to turn the saw off and regain composure and by the on/off switch shining in the sunlight lay my pinky. I held back a scream. I didn’t hold back the regurgitation as I looked at my hand and saw a mangled mess of skin blood and bone. My ring finger hung to the floor on two little strands of nerve. My middle finger knuckle was gone and I held my pinky to my chest like it was a treasured heirloom.
I would never play guitar again. NF had a tour booked in 6 weeks. What am I going to do? I can’t do anything! I reached for a cigarette but I remembered they fell out of my pocket when I measured the closet. I walked out of the garage to the front of the house where the homeowner was working. My boss was slowly pulling up. He stopped at the end of the driveway and most likely sat finishing his third joint of the day and trying to make sense of the scene that was unrolling before his eyes.
I say to the homeowner
Call 911
Did you cut yourself?
Yes, it’s bad.
We have band aids!
You had better have a thousand. Just call 911.
He gets down off of the ladder and looks at my hand for the first time. His skin goes pale. He starts screaming for his wife, for the phone. I am not sure if it is in English. His words do not make sense. I start screaming for him to go into the closet and get my cigarettes. I tell him he had better do this or I ma going to go and bleed all over everything. I want a smoke. Damn. I think I might have been in shock.
Scott, my boss tells me, that he sees the wife come out with the phone and my smokes. The owner and his wife started running back and forth on the lawn with the phone like a couple of chickens in a coop. I am walking back and forth with them screaming at them for a cigarette. He finally comes running because he realized that I had got hurt. All I wanted was a cigarette. Scott knew I wanted a cigarette and yells, “Someone find his fucking cigarettes!”
I hear the horns of an ambulance. I still have not smoked. The medics get out with a stretcher. I won’t sit down I tell them I want to smoke. They get me a cigarette and cut my favorite shirt off of me.
NO ONE IS PAYING ATTENTION… They strap a tourniquet around my arm, slap my arm, slide a needle and push. FUCK. My feet have not felt this good in ten years. I look at the guy and say hey, I know my hand is mangled, but my body if feeling good. Wow. I forget this feeling. You had better give me another.
The surgeries, the healing, the head games I played with myself lasted about two and a half years. The compensation wasn’t enough to keep bills at bay. I was already in a financial downward spiral from not knowing how to pay bills or manage money and this accident and some very untimely deaths brought on the beginning of the end of my property ownership, my bands, my friendships, my recovery, my life as it was that fine Thursday morning in the Spring of 2007.
To be continued…