Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

There was a time in my life when I could work from can until can’t. Well, actually, I still can, but “can’t” arrives much earlier than it once did!

I have learned, especially when I am working in my woodshop, to take breaks and sometimes to walk away and call it a day. An old woodworker’s cliché says, “Measure twice, cut once.” After working too many hours without a break, I have measured a half-dozen times and still made the wrong cut. We are more prone to accident, and even injury, when we are tired. An old woodworker friend of mine once told me that my table saw was stupid. He said, “It doesn’t know the difference between wood and bone!” I’ve come to realize that he was partially right, but that it might not be the saw that is the dumb one! Thankfully, I still have all ten digits. 

When my body grows tired, my brain usually follows right behind, and I make dumb mistakes. They can be costly, and at worst, they may be painful. If I would know when to say when, I could, no doubt, avoid some mistakes and injuries.

Last week, I had worked all day on a couple of outdoor chairs and a table. I replaced all the old rotten wood with new cypress and repainted the wrought iron legs and ends. I had a difficult time getting the holes I had drilled in my new wood to line up with the holes in the iron. When I began to grow frustrated with my progress, I decided it was time to take a break and walk away.

I spotted one of our iron lounge chairs beside our pool. They are the kind that will lay back completely flat, or if you want to sit up, you can raise the back up and lock it into place. When I went to sit on one end of the chair, I guess I was too tired to notice that it was in the “completely flat” prone position. I didn’t realize that I was about to sit on the head end of the lounge chair, rather than the other end which has legs. When I sat my seat on the chair, the end of the chair where I deposited the end of myself, raced downward to the pool’s sidewalk. It was like a seesaw when your partner jumps off his end while you are up in the air. When my backside slammed down on the concrete, my elbows pitched in to give aid. While there wasn’t enough padding on my derriere to absorb the blow without pain, there was even less on my funny bones. The result was, well, not funny…at all. My numb brain was still alert enough to signal my elbows that this was not nearly as enjoyable as a double-scoop of rocky road. About the time I thought things couldn’t get much worse, they surely did. The other end of the lounge chair decided to join in on the attack and assault of the old-tired-and-not-so-smart woodworker. It shot up from the sidewalk like a rocket, doubling back over itself, and popped “yours truly” in the back of the head! Rather than saying what I was tempted to say, I quickly quoted Romans 8:28…at least 8 times!

As I tried to gather my senses, I assessed if I was seriously injured or just mostly embarrassed. I quickly looked around to see if anyone had witnessed my train wreck. At that very moment, I knew I had missed when I should have said when, and I called it a day!