Bad Heredity

We spent the day working on framing in a floor to tie our driveway/garage structure into the existing residence. There used to be a path across, but we destroyed it after discovering extensive water damage.

I did my second joist layout and must say it turned out quite well. My measurements, and consequentially, my cuts have been much better since switching to a pen for layout. The sharper line makes it much easier to get a precise cut.

We had a system down with one man cutting, and two guys hanging, one on the ground, and one on the deck of the driveway. We had four guys at the site, so one was taking care of the standing around for us; he seems to do that a lot.

So, I was working from the ground, on a ladder hanging the joists. On one of the last few, I was swinging my hammer underhanded to knock the joist up a bit to flush with the ledger board. I completely missed, and my arm swung up past the joist, right back into a trajectory aimed straight for my face. Actually, it wasn’t really my arm swinging to my face; it was the shaft of the hammer connected to the chunk of fingers on the end of my arm swinging up at me.

I’d like to take a second to mention that my hammer is a steel shafted Estwing framing hammer. Not wood, not fiberglass, Steel. I’ve had that hammer for fourteen years, I’ve beaten the crap out of it, and it’s still good as new. If you’re going to buy a hammer, for the love of God, pay a few more dollars and get an Estwing. You’ll have it the rest of your life.

Ok, back to the story, moron on a ladder, steel hammer shaft swinging toward said moron’s face. In the split second before the hammer split my forehead, my mind said to itself, “You are NOT going to let yourself be as stupid as your mother this time. MOVE YOUR HEAD.”

Well, there was no arguing with that logic, so I moved my face, and the hammer flew safely past my head, and amused the hell out of my Mexican counterpart watching from the deck above in the process. I have to admit, it was pretty funny, and if I had hit myself, I definitely would have wished that I could have seen it.

Now, at this point, you may be asking yourself why I asked myself if I wanted to be as stupid as my mother. Well, over a decade ago, my mother decided she wanted to be a construction worker with my dad and went to work for him in Sacramento. She loved it, and I’m pretty sure having been an accounts payable manager in an office as her career before made the experience that much more enjoyable for her. (I think ditching a clean office environment to go play in the dirt must run in my family.)

On one fateful afternoon, my mother had been given the task of installing some dock doors. As she was tightening a bolt above her head, the crescent wrench slipped off. She was using a lot of force pulling down on it, so when it slipped, it came right down and smacked her square between the eyes. None of us actually saw it, but I pictured it more than once when she was yelling at me for being a typical teenager back in the day.

The smack ended up giving my poor mother two incredible black eyes. I don’t think a Hollywood makeup artist could have painted them on better. For more than a few days, mom looked like someone beat the hell out of her.

My father was well known around the site for having a fiery Irish temper, and my mother was beloved for being the cute little soccer-mom trying to be a construction worker. When she came to work the next day, every guy on the site had one goal: kill my father.

Ironworkers, Carpenters, Electricians, Plumbers, Welders, Heavy Equipment Operators, normally separate by job function and trade, were now united in their shared hatred of my father for having the nerve to lay a hand on my sweet, innocent mother. Luckily for my pops, one of the guys had the decency to confirm the situation with mom before setting the lynch mob in progress.

She explained that it had in fact happened on the site before, and there was a witness to confirm the story, so for the time being, my father’s life was saved. However, for two weeks, my old man was as nice as Mother Theresa on Easter.

He knew that one pair of dirty pants out of place, or an unwashed dish left on the coffee table could be just enough to push my mom into using her new power to sign his death warrant the next day at work.

So, long story short, the imbedded memory of my mom being stupid enough to smack herself in the face with a tool was all it took to keep me from repeating it if possible. To make myself feel better, I’ll say it was all just a way of continuing my teen rebellion against my mom, but to make my father feel better I’ll say that I was trying to learn from the mistakes of others for once; he was always on me about that as a kid.

We were able to get our joists all hung and most of the area sheeted before leaving for the day. I finished the day out at 172 pounds again.