......Ouch!!!!

The driver slipped off the screw and went "poink" right thru my nail. Blood festooned. I washed it off, thinking there are very many things one can't do without that finger--like build shelves, and, oh-oh, play guitar. It looks like I'll lose the nail for sure.

I was going to just go home at that point, and then I remembered that my last tetanus shot was during the first term of the Reagan Presidency, and that's probably no coincidence. So I hobbled across the street to the local "Urgent Care" emporium to get looked at and, hopefully, shot. Or something.

As if I wasn't worried enough, the doctor decided my finger should be X-rayed--he said it's quite common in this type of injury to fracture the last bone in the fingertip. (Quick, class? Yes, Steven? "Phalange" is correct! GOOD boy!)

So he microwaves my finger, and then comes back in and says, "Well, the good news is you didn't break your finger again."

Again?

Turns out, he says, I apparently fractured this here same phalange several years ago, from the looks of it. News to me--and then I remembered an altercation between my finger and a hammer when I worked at Sam Goody. This was in 1979. I asked him if it was anything I needed to worry about, and he said--I swear I'm not making this up--"Not unless you play guitar."

MUCH conversation ensued, and he was surprised to find out that it never hurt much all these years. (well, not after the first month anyway.) So he said don't worry about it.

The gig that my Band of Wackos has on Friday the 28th should be interesting, though. I don't know how I'm going to be able to play, sober. Wanna come?

Well, if I live through that we are going, the following night, to Valley Forge to see the Kanter/Balin/Casady/Prairie Prince "Starship", who are really quite good these days, along with (wait for it) "Steppenwolf"--likely John Kay and a bunch of 25-year-olds with spandex and poodle-hair--and also Procol Harum, which I believe to be the entire original band nowadays, although maybe without Trower. Never seen them, or Steppenwolf for that matter. Only one thing vexes, though--and that's that the same night, at the Bottom Line, is Arthur Lee, and we'll have to miss him.

One more cute little story about today at the doctor's. Stick with this one till the end--cause at the outset it's going to sound like I'm making fun of someone's physical "deformity", which I would never do. Much. But stay with me, now:

There are two nurses. One, an old hand, named Tracy, whom I've seen before. Another one, whose name I didn't get. It was her first day on the job, she hastened to explain, and that's why she was hanging off Tracy like a barnacle, watching everything and learning. Anyways--this woman was perhaps in her mid-to-late twenties. Very short--under five feet. Not fat but slightly overweight. But the poor lady was sporting a "rack" that looked literally PAINFUL. She appeared positively freakish--I'm not exaggerating when I say that each of her breasts was as big as her butt. I've never seen anything like it. So, anyway, here's why I bring it up: at the tail end of my ordeal, Tracy is bandaging my whole hand, using this Chinese Finger-Trap kind of thing as a template, and the new girl is leaning over, watching. I am, of course, intent on my finger and not watching either of them. So suddenly, Tracy exclaims "Oh! God! I'm sorry!!!!" And I'm thinking, "What? She didn't do anything--what's she sorry about?" And just then, the new girl says:

"Oh, don't worry. You're gonna be bumping into those a LOT."

("THOSE"????)

P.S.......One more thing. I keep forgetting to mention this: A guy walks into Wendy's store a few months back, she helps him out, and eventually he hands her his business card. "Adam D. Lipsius." Turns out Fred is this guy's uncle.