Split Second Events or The Importance Of Keeping Track Of The Little Things

Part 1: The Event.

The next day, when I recounted the previous night's events to my neighbor, he simply responded "Shit." He was right.

There's comfort embedded in obvious things and inadequacy in those overlooked. When a ten-pound log got bound in the band-saw blade and it gained sufficient torque to leap off the table and smash my wife's nose — let's just say that wasn't an obvious chain of events.

Perhaps the chain of events was very short, or perhaps it passed too quickly for me to absorb its violent effects. Split-second events have a peculiar way of distorting geometry. Whatever the case, after I tipped forward from my heels to my toes and dropped my hands from my eyes, the shape of the workshop had changed.

Tanya was no longer standing behind the band saw. The log that she had started to cut was no longer on the band saw. Her face mask was no longer on her face. Sparks exploded off the blade on every revolution. And what would have been an eerie yet pleasant silence following the sonic decay of the log's smash was only betrayed by Tanya's colorfully descriptive utterings about the recently altered state of her nose.

At first, the apparent lack of blood puzzled me. A triangular glance from the log rolling to a stop on the cracked concrete floor, to the sparking grind of the blade against the ceramic guides, to Tanya's hands cupped over her face set the situation into perspective. The blood was pouring into her hands. There was much to be done.

As Tanya dashed from the workshop toward the back stairs, I paused to worry. What if she was disoriented and tripped on the loose redwood step that I hadn't yet repaired? This mental pause happened as I turned off the workshop lights, realized that the band saw was still running and sparking, turned the lights back on, hit the green — wrong — the red button on the saw, glanced at the drop of blood on the log which had by this point come to a stop, hit the lights again, pushed the dog aside because we were not playing this time, and found Tanya in the kitchen some 7 seconds later. It's amazing how much one can accomplish in 7 seconds.

Article Author: Brian Sorrell

Brian Sorrell programs computers, writes philosophy, loves bicycles, and is soon-to-be a father.

Visit Brian Sorrell's author page — Brian Sorrell's Blog