“Daddy? Why do your fingernails look so…”?

“Misshapen and ugly?” I smiled, finishing what they were trying to say.

“Yeah.”

“First, it’s really just two of them. But anyway, I have a theory,” I replied, noting the fat bumps on my pointer and middle fingers, “Nail bed trauma!”

“What’s that?”

“Trauma is another word for something nasty that happens to someone…or something.”

“What happened?”

“My hand was sucked into a machine.”

“Get out!” replied Regina.

“Are you making this up?” Lyd asked.

“No! Not this one. It was my first job out of high school. I worked at a factory, specifically on a machine that made photo albums.”

“Photo albums?”

“Yes. Photo Album…” I paused, studying their faces. “Okay, before smart phones, pictures had to be developed, uhm, printed, and we used to put them into books that are designed to hold those pictures. They were called photo albums.” They nodded vaguely. They did not yet totally understand, but they understood enough for me to get back to the story. “Anyway, we had sheets of cardboard with hinges for the book spine cut into them. They were placed on a conveyer belt that moved in really fast, four-foot bursts. The cardboard was fed through a series of rollers and glue and wrapped the cardboard in decorative paper. Every now and then that really fast rubber conveyer belt would get gunked up with glue and it needed to get wiped down, and that was exactly what I was doing. Unfortunately, the guy I was working with on the machine didn’t know I was still wiping down the belt and he went ahead and started it up. Suddenly that conveyer belt moved in a fast four-foot long burst. My pointer and middle fingers were pulled through a gap about as thick as a photo album, maybe a bit smaller than a quarter inch thick. The metal guard rammed against my third knuckle. I saw my rag shoot out the other end of the machine and was certain my two fingers were caught in that rag. The belt ran again, another four feet of industrial textured rubber ran along the bottom of my hand and scraped off skin along the way, I felt my fingers crunch down more. I couldn’t reach the emergency stop button, so I clenched my jaw, shut my eyes and yanked my hand out.” The girls were enraptured, practically holding each other, listening.

I spared them the graphic details. I’ll spare you those graphic details as well. In summary, my pointer and middle fingertip bones were split, a lot of skin was scraped off. One fingernail was found with the rag, the other one fell off a day or so later.

“And ever since then…” I stared at my warped nails, “They’ve looked like this.” I looked at the girls, “The end.”

Annie and I put them to bed and that was the end of it. At least that’s what I thought. A week had passed. The girls had just arrived Home from school, “Hey there Reggie Veggie! Anything interesting in your backpack to show me?”

“I wrote a book!”

“Oooh, break it out, I Love a good story!”

I have spent a few weeks of my life without a fully functioning hand, unlike Reggie’s ears and mind. Apparently, she was listening that evening.

She decided to chronicle my tale. I was trying to picture her teacher, torn between all out laughter and horror.

Here it is, in its entirety for you:

Let’s start at the most obvious place, the cover. As you can see, it is “By Regina” you will also note the title, which, after I interpret it for you, reads, “My Dad’s Hand Got Sucked into a Machine”.

In a world that encourages us to not judge a book by its cover, I think my straightforward daughter has given us readers a refreshing break from the labors of interpretation. What you see is what you get here!

 

Then we open her book, and we’re presented with page one. We’re pretty much just dumped straight into the action. Not much for story buildup or character arcs. We’re even denied the motivations of this young man!

Such brazen moves! Throwing so many tried and true conventions out the window! Who is this bold writer?

Oh yeah…it reads, “Once upon a time my dad’s hand got sucked into a machine” (Her friend suggested giving me oversized ears)

Now this next page forced me to go back a page. Apparently that first page pretty much represents the beginning and the top of the plot curve. Because really, this is simply the lead-in for the finale. (Between you and me, this picture, which I’m assuming is a self-portrait, cracks me up every time I see it.)

“And then”

 

 

That lead-in drops, or maybe plops us onto the bottom of the plot curve. We are immediately given the finale.

“it peeled off skin”

That’s it, the adventure is over. Slowly close the book and think about it all. No follow up, no epilogue. What happened to this poor young man? How did he get through this ordeal?

The reader is left feeling cold and hollow, much like the hearltess machine that claimed the protagonist’s fingernails and a bit of flesh from his palms…

It’s much like the Industrial Revolution actually.

Such a simple, straightforward portrayal of the struggles of working in photo album factories in the early 1990s! Move over Dickens! Move over Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn! Your throne is being threatened!

So thought-provoking, so deep.