Ulu knives and optometry school

I don't have a great history with sharp objects.

I remember being on a long road trip, visiting some wood carver, and getting a lecture about how the only proper way to sharpen a pencil is with a knife. We purchased one of those knives. I remember it as something basically like a modern box knife with a nasty hooked blade that you could unscrew and protect inside the handle.

I remember doing a lot of whittling with that knife. I feel like I produced a couple of passible vaguely bird-shaped things. That's probably wishful thinking on my part.

I don't remember when my parents got my first wood-carving kit

We were doing a lot of arts and crafts stuff in the early 1980s. I remember spending a lot of time around one store in particular.

I think this was when Mom started doing pottery figurines.

Someone involved with that store carved beautiful bas-relief sculptures of buildings out of wood rounds.

I fell in love with that and wanted to learn how to do it myself. Mom arranged for me to get some lessons.

We had a swimming pool back then. I remember that it was a major investment, and my dad monitored the chemistry constantly when he was in town.

One night, I'd been more interested in whatever carving project I was doing than in going outside to swim.

I hung out in the amorphous room between our garage and kitchen that  got transformed from dining room into office.

I was deeply engrossed in gouging out the background behind some random building when the knife slipped. I'm sure I'd heard the safety rule about "always cut away from your parts," but when has a kid ever paid attention to that sort of thing without an object lesson?

I got the object lesson that day, but I didn't learn it.

I gashed open my own belly. It barely cut into the fat layer, and the adults got the bleeding stopped pretty quickly. I don't even see the scar any more, but I still feel pretty panicked at the memory.

At some point, I vaguely remember getting in trouble for something. I was supposed to do the dishes by hand for a while as punishment, even though we had a dishwasher.

I managed to drop something, then reach to grab it as it shattered. I gashed my hand open and got a reprieve.

Later, around junior high, I carried a pocket knife to my girlfriend's birthday party.

Her best friend decided it would be funny to wrap her present in a couple of layers of Scotch tape.

I decided to be all manly and cut through all the nonsense.

Instead, I sliced really deeply into the tip of my left index finger.

I wound up in the ER and got 8 stitches. 

Back then, my guitar was basically my life. I couldn't play for 2 or 3 months, and it was mentally and emotionally agonizing.

My fingertip died, fell, off, and regrew. These days, the nerves mostly report what's going on correctly. But there are still times when I'll grip something and get a jolt of...it isn't pain. It's just a sensation of wrongness.

We went back to that restaurant a few years ago (it was probably 20, so call it 15 years later), and we could all still see my blood stains in the carpet.

By the time I turned into a roommate with Khrys and Melissa, we just all accepted a basic fact: I could not be trusted around sharp objects.

A few years ago, he spent some time in Alaska to finish up his practical optometry training.

It sounds very much as if it's just a different country. I'm in awe of the experiences he had up there, living in a world where the sun never sets.

One of the cool things about living in a "different country" like that (who could have known that Alaska is part of the US?) is bringing back cool tourist swag for your friends and family.

He brought back Ulu knives for pretty much everyone except me.

I couldn't be trusted near a sharp object, so I got a bear hugging a shot glass.

I had not consciously thought about this in years. Well, scars aren't something you forget. But my memories of the energy that Khrys put into protecting me from my own clumsiness had faded a bit.

I've spent a lot of time and money lately arranging to get a bunch of sharp edges for working with wood. And doing things like learning how to make them sharper and actually using them safely.

I'm spending a lot of time (and, let's be honest, money) on ebay, looking for vintage tools that you just cannot buy new these days.

I was drooling over an amazing hunting knife blade made from hand-forged Damascus steel, fantasizing about ways to make this even more awesome by adding a handle, when I saw a link to an ulu knife for sale.

This really slammed the irony of where I am now versus where I was then.

A huge part of what I'm doing in my spare time is focused on ways to make edges sharper. The sharper the knife is, the less likely it is to slip.

I'm spending at least that much effort into making sure no one has body parts in places that might get sliced when that knife slips anyway.

I'm still not doing that great a job at keeping myself safe.

My wrists are still healing up from when my plane skips over nasty, gnarly wood.

But I think I'm getting better.

And, really, isn't that the point?