Thumb Hard

I have this vivid memory from my childhood:

My mother and father were still married.  My father was working in the garage.  I was playing in the living room when I heard my father bellow my mother's name.  I went to see what he wanted, and he had driven a nail through his hand or finger, I couldn't tell specifically where, but there was blood streaming down his hand.  He was calm and cool, but a little agitated about the whole mess.  I couldn't tell if he was more agitated about the pain or about the actual mess the blood stream was creating on his clothes and in the house.  Then, my father vanishes.

I can't tell you how real this vivid memory is.  My mother doesn't remember it.  My mother also doesn't remember me flapping my 5-year-old penis at her to make her laugh, which I'm certain happened a lot.  But the vanishing part at the end of the memory makes me think that at least some of the memory didn't happen.

At the time when this "memory" happened, I remember thinking that my father was incredibly tough because he didn't cry about the nail being in his hand or finger.  Maybe I was trying to make my father tougher than he was.  Maybe I was boosting him, because even then, I knew that my father was a complete and utter waste as a human.  Maybe it helped me feel better about myself to think about coming from somebody who wasn't a complete pussy.  Maybe it was just a cooler story.  I don't know.  But I thought he was tough for not crying.

Yesterday, I sliced my thumb open on some errant PVC pipe I was working on.  It bled everywhere.  And as I took my bleeding hand in to the kitchen to clean up, I realized I was grumpy about the mess I was making with my blood.  And I thought about my memory, and the possibility that my father had been grumpy about the blood mess he was making.  And any time I draw a comparison between my father and myself... I become very, very angry.  It's not my fucking fault that part of him is swimming in me!  I didn't choose him!  But I can certainly choose to be completely different from him!  I don't have to be the failed abortion my father is!  And at that moment, I changed.  I had been grumpy about the mess I was making with my blood.  I change to being John McClain in Die Hard as he pulls the broken slivers of glass out of his foot, trying not to feel the pain.  As I turned on the tap and waited for the hot water to turn cold, I faked a grimace and held my hand as if it was my foot with broken glass in it.  And I imagined a radio sitting on the counter next to me as I ran my thumb under the water.  And as the blood came off into the sink, I imagined struggling to speak to my newly-made cop friend, trying to help me on the outside of the building I'm trapped in, and grunting into the radio, "Al, I want you to find my wife," (my wife was sitting, concerned, behind me at our computer desk), "I don't know how you'll know, but by then you'll know how.  She's heard me say 'I love you' a thousand times.  She never heard me say 'I'm sorry'.  I want you to tell her that, Al. I want you to tell her that ah, John said that he was sorry. OK? You got that, man?"

Movies are the perfect way to help you have fun when you slice open your thumb, and they help you forget that your father is a fuck.