Saw Blades Hurt 
2003 Reader Submission
Pending Acceptance
I’m afraid this one will have to stay a personal account as it is somewhat old and I have no idea of how to get proof, plus as I recall the perpetrator was around 13 or 14 years old so maturity may be a question. The main premise of this story requires an understanding of one of those simple childhood toys the whirligig. Typically, this toy consists of a large button placed on a loop of string. By giving the button a spinning start then alternately tensioning and relaxing the string in the appropriate rhythm you can accelerate the button to truly impressive spinning speeds.
One day a friend who I’ll call Carl and I were poking through his garage. His dad had a fairly extensive workshop set up there and for some reason had a circular saw blade hunk by a loop of string to a nail in a rafter. Most saw blades have a large arbor hole and a single smaller hole used to keep the blade still when you secure or remove the blade from a saw. This particular blade actually had two smaller holes one on each side of the large hole. The string loop was passed through the two smaller holes. Now the blade was hung at approximately throat height (perhaps Darwinian tendencies run in the family) so Carl decides he’ll take it down for safety’s sake. After taking the blade down, Carl started absentmindedly spinning the blade around allowing the string to wind and unwind. It was about this time that he noticed the blades resemblance to the above mentioned childs’ toy. Carl took a loop of string in each hand, gave the blade a spin down his chest (commenting, “Ouch, that hurt!!!??!?!?!”) He then proceeded with the described pulling and relaxing of the string. While the blade took a bit more work to get up to speed than a typical button, Carl soon had the blade whizzing forwards and backwards at a nice clip.
Unfortunately, Carl had forgotten two very important points. 1) Saw blades are heavy and build up quite bit of gyroscopic momentum which rapidly tires your arms as you try to control their spin. 2) The teeth of a spinning saw blade are darn near invisible in a dim garage. As he kept the blade spinning fatigue rapidly set in and gravity did the rest. Slowly the spinning disk dropped down till it came in contact with the front of his ripstop nylon running shorts. The blade went right through the shorts and evidently a lot of skin and flesh in his Carl’s pubic region. Carl dropped the blade which miraculously dribbled between his legs across the floor with no further personal damage. However one look at Carl in the fetal position on the floor clutching his crotch as blood seeped around his hands let me know considerable damage had been done. There was a quick call to 911 followed by an ambulance ride to the hospital and reputedly an impressive number of stitches, into the triple digits but the exact number now escapes me.
I never actually saw the damage so I can’t comment as to whether or not the accident has removed Carl from the gene pool. He has never reproduced, but I would tend to place at least equal blame for that on Carl’s attempts at impressing the opposite sex. I’ll save those for later as my guess is sooner or later one of those might lead to another contribution.
Submitted on 09/16/2003
Submitted by:
Rick Warren
Reference:
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