One Bright Sunny Day

So there I am, cutting an air dried beech plank on my bandsaw to get some stretcher material, when I hear that horrid sound of metal on metal. After some wrestling, I get the piece off of the saw and split it open to find a fully embedded framing nail! It's painful enough that I'll have to change the blade, but this was a brand new Woodslicer that I hadn't even wrecked making spoons yet.



 Now, the Buddhist in me says that all things are connected, both the blade and the nail came from the soil and out of the soil grew the wood which I'll use to make the money that I'll have to spend on a new blade, and.....honestly, it didn't help.

Upon further inspection of the rest of my beech planks, I found a host of nails spaced at about the distance that you'd place them to fashion a ladder, perhaps to a treefort. And I started thinking of some sunny day back in the mid seventies, when it was perfectly likely that I was somewhere in the woods pounding nails in some poor tree.

Then I imagined what I'd say to young me, after all, this might the pivotal moment that he realizes that he wants to spend his life butchering wood.

"Hey kid" I'd say "next Christmas, you might consider just asking for $5, rather than the Stretch Armstrong doll, that you're just going to dissect anyway. By the way, the stuff inside looks like jelly, but trust me, it isn't.
Then, take the five dollars and bet it on the Americans to win gold in Hockey at the 1980 Olympics, I know, I know, no one can beat the Russians, but just do it, geesh, I have no idea how my mother put up with you. 

Then, put the winnings in a savings bond, cash it in 2010 and buy a top of the line metal detector, you numbskull. Oh, and one more thing, in 1993, when the girl in the tight sweater beats you at pool, take a deep breath and accept the defeat with grace, you'll hear this story for the rest of your life...if you're lucky."