It was eighth-grade shop class. 1975. Sheet metal shop to be precise. In the room behind the shop teacher was a metal table that had a blade that came down like a wide guillotine blade when you stepped on a foot press. I had placed a small piece of sheet metal over the line where the blade passes through the object where you wanted it cut, and apparently, I didn’t withdraw my hand far enough, so that after the blade descended and I reached to remove the sheet metal, I was horrified to see blood jetting from the tip of my right middle finger. I had experienced no pain, just the slightest sensation of a tug on the fingertip, but not enough to cause concern — the projectile bloodstream would accomplish that.

I turned and walked through the door into the lecture part of the class, where the teacher saw me coming through holding my bloody finger and rushed me to the school nurse. There the shocked nurse rinsed my finger in the sink, educating me on finger anatomy and the vein that runs the length of it as I observed the blood like it was coming from a pulsing squirt gun. While she speculated that I would need a skin graph, the shop teacher had gone back to the scene of the crime where some classmates had found the tip of my finger on the floor under the sheet metal table and had tossed it into the trash can. The teacher returned and discussed with the nurse the possibility of having it stitched back on, and asked if I wanted to keep the fingertip. If so, he would put it on ice. By this time, the nurse had finished bandaging my finger and encouraged me to lie down in the bed. I declined the offer to retrieve my finger tip, having agreed with the nurse that a skin graph was the best option to pursue.

That weekend, my older sister and her boyfriend were visiting. I was telling him the story of my finger. Being an ambulance driver for the Baltimore City Fire Department, he advised me against getting a skin graph, relating that it would be a long and painful procedure requiring multiple visits. Looking at the damage, he concluded that it would heal nicely on its own with proper care. He said he had some Bacitracin and bandages on the ambulance that he would provide for me. I accepted his help and the wound healed readily enough, but for many years afterward I had no fingerprints on the tip of that finger, and it hurt like hell whenever I stubbed it. Even now, at 63, there is still a small area at the fingernail where the fingerprint hasn’t grown back. It’s a sacrifice I can live with.