Like a scene from a movie torture sequence, my middle fingernail was completely off the nail bed. I wasn’t bleeding yet, but the gushing was coming soon. My wife heard my monosyllabic scream and rushed into go mode. She grabbed a blue shop paper towel. I pressed it against the open wound and dry swallowed expired Advil. She drove the country roads to urgent care.
Two urgent care locations, two hours, and one agonizingly painful numbing shot later, a doctor super-glued my flesh and stitched the dead nail back on as a temporary shield. I became the proud owner of a pink, burrito-looking left middle finger. Not my best look. Not how I planned to spend my morning.
I’d been working on a new project and gathering tools when I met this latest obstacle. I hadn’t run afoul of my table saw, band saw, or any of the other scary machines I use daily. No, the villain in this story was an innocuous grain crusher and one second of inattention. I fucked up.
The medical drama ended Friday at noon. Then my wife left for a five-day business trip, leaving me to solo-parent our seven-year-old with one and a half working hands. All our potential daddy-daughter plans, like fishing, lip balm making, and woodworking, got wiped off the board. The pain I could manage. Handedness was the real problem.
“I don’t do anything right.” That’s how I jokingly describe how aggressively left-handed I am. I brush my teeth, eat, bathe, and open doors with my left hand. I’ve even overcome the inherent design flaws of scissors to cut left-handed. I’m a proud, lifelong member of the 10% who get to call ourselves lefties.
And now, for at least a few weeks, I must go right. Is there no god in heaven?!
Every simple task I used to do without thinking now requires deliberate attention and care. Opening a lemonade bottle is like executing a Mars Rover mission. It is slow, awkward, and requires 100% of my concentration or a whole roll of paper towels to clean up the mess.
I didn’t expect or plan for any of this, but ready or not, I’m living with it. I’m finding new ways to do things I first mastered as a child.
What do you learn when you can no longer rely on what’s worked so well in the past?
Whenever you invest yourself in something, whether it’s parenting or running a business, you build everything around your strengths. You rely on the reflexes you’ve honed for years. You use the skills that feel natural, fast, and dominant.
But every builder eventually hits a moment where their main advantage vanishes. In my business, a key employee quit mid-shift, ingredients went out of stock for months, and critical machines broke during production runs. I didn’t get to pause the business while I waited for things to go back to normal. I adapted.
This week, I don’t get to opt out of parenting for five days because my left hand is in a pink bandage. So I’m slowing down and leaning on my clumsy side, the right one. It’s slow, it’s messy, and it’ll never feel like me, and yet, for now, I must do things right.
What’s your left hand? The thing you do without thinking, the one you’d be lost without.
Disclosure: I write these posts. AI helps me edit them.