We had an incident in our family last weekend that reminded me of the importance of safety when using power tools. My father-in-law was using a table saw. He was cutting a board into stakes to use in the garden. He reached around behind the saw to pull out one of the stakes, and the saw caught his hand.

He had a pretty serious hand injury, and when my mother-in-law first called us, we did not know how serious the injury would be. We soon learned, however, that he would need surgery. He severed the tendons all across his knuckles on his left hand.

They went to their local hospital, which is a satellite hospital for a larger one in the metropolitan area nearby. The doctors at the satellite center sent them to the larger hospital to meet with a hand surgeon. The surgeon said that he would do what he could but that the hand would need some serious work to be healed.

After a couple of hours in surgery, my father-in-law was done, and the doctor reported to my mother-in-law. They told her that he lost his ring finger and down past the first knuckle on his thumb and middle finger. He still may lose the remaining portion of his middle finger, but they are not certain at this point.

This incident will cost him about eight weeks worth of work. He will not be able to do any work because he will be in pain and will be rehabbing his hand. He will have to re-learn to use the hand. That will take an enormous amount of time and energy and probably will not be a fun process.

He works on a computer, so he will be able to work. It will mean a good deal of adjustment in the way that he types, but he is not out of work forever. This disability is one with which he can learn to live if he works at it. I am not sure how he will take it overall. My father-in-law has led a life without much trouble or trials. It is tough to foresee how he will take the loss of part of his hand.

At this point, he is still taking a good bit of pain medicine, and he does not quite make sense when you talk to him. It will be a few days before he starts to wean himself from the pain medicine and can begin to deal with the loss.

Then begins the physical therapy. I am afraid that it will be a painful process and that he will have a hard time getting his hand to do what he wants for a while.

His accident has reminded me that it is so important to be careful when we use power tools. I know what happens. You get so comfortable using them that you forget to take the safety precautions that you took so seriously when you first starting using the equipment. You begin cutting one corner, then another, until you leave yourself open to any accident.

You should not reach to grab any piece of wood in a saw, and everyone knows that. He knows that. Still, most people who use table saws have made that kind of mistake at some point because they stop worrying about being safe and just try to get the job done quickly. Now unfortunately my father-in-law will have to deal with that mistake for the rest of his life.

Should someone you know go through an accident with a power tool, you should not try to tell that person what he or she should have done, even if you think it. Instead be sympathetic because the person will need your support. Whenever someone does something that causes an accident, that person will remind herself or himself of what should have happened over and over again. There is no need for others to do it as well.

If you are unsure how much to say about an injury, let the person who is hurt take the lead. Do not try to make too much of the injury if the other person does not mention it, but do not be afraid to talk about it either.

By Julia Mercer

It can be a hilarious observation to stop and watch the way people behave at a hardware store. I have been habiting hardware stores with the men in my life for more than thirty years. It began when I was a little girl and my father took me with him on Saturday mornings as he browsed our town's local hardware store. Although I loved going out alone with my dad, the hardware store was not my idea of fun. I thought it had a weird odor and it was rather dark and dirty. The only other people in the store were older men who took the whole thing very seriously, and who smelled like the rest of the store. I also did not like the fact that the old men noticed me, a little girl, very out-of-place in a hardware store. They smiled and offered me candy; things that today, would label them as a pedophile or child abductor. Yet those were simpler times and I took the candy. It was always safe. When the old men weren't offering me candy, my little brother and I were digging in our pockets for pennies so we could get a few peanuts, dried-out gum or M-n-M's from the ancient candy machine by the front door. We were well behaved so my dad pretty much let us go where we wanted, as long as we were quiet and didn't bother anything. He was busy looking at his next drill, hammer, or saw to worry much about us.

Outside the hardware store was a pond, the only pond within many miles of our home. It was not a scenic pond, in fact it was surrounded by large white rocks that made it look bleak and ugly, but the rocks were great for climbing. Often, if the weather was nice, we would climb on the rocks until my dad surfaced with his new power tool purchase. These are fond memories, but today I can't imagine trying to re-create them for my children, even if I wanted to.

Today, the local, mom and pop hardware stores of yester-year are few and far between. They have been replaced by giant warehouse hardware super stores such as Lowe's, Home Depot, and others. In many ways, these new, large, bright stores are much better for me. They offer shopping carts, soda machines, and many of the items I am interested in, in addition to the power tools my husband studies each time we go. My children enjoy looking at the colorful flowers in the garden section or playing with the home decor computer screen that allows visitors to try a plethora of paint colors and shades on imaginary rooms. While my husbands frowns and ponders over the power saws, nail guns and electric screwdrivers, the rest of the family finds other things to do. My son finds pieces of PVC pipe to use as fake swords for fake fencing. My daughters look first at the paint screen and then enjoy studying the many types of wall paper available. All these stores now have the aforementioned soda machines or refrigerated soda bottles, but they also often have rows of candy racks, appealing to the fact that lunch is over due and we need a diversion.

When I was a child, the concern was not that I would be abducted, but that I might get lost. Today, my children and I know our way around these hardware super stores, but it is my husband that we worry about. He wonders around in a power tool induced haze. He frequents the aisles that have remnants of that distinct odor I remember from my childhood at the hardware store. He seems to have that same distant look in his eyes that my dad used to have whenever I asked him if it was time to leave.

I just hope that if my husband wonders outside, he won't fall into the pond (yes, ironically, there happens to be a pond near our current hardware super store). I also hope that no one offers him candy. He is so focused on his studies, so drugged by the lure of power tools, so lost in his own thoughts, that someone could hand him a live bug and he'd probably pop it into his mouth without looking. I guess maybe I had better stick more closely to him in the future.