Staplers Hurt
Looking backward from 2009-12-03.
I was just paying bills. After deducting them from my checking account, I staple the loose pages together with my trusty Swingline stapler. These were standard issue at work; every new hire got one for their desk. They’re quite rugged and durable; they’re made very well, and because of that, I actually own two; one for the upstairs office here, and the other for downstairs in the west room office. Neither one has failed me for nearly twenty years, and I just I love them.
Nowadays, they don’t open up very far when you’re stapling; no doubt by design. However, back in the late 60s, the mouth could be opened all the way — certainly wide enough to insert a thumb or other finger inside the jaws, and then staple it. I did this once while making Christmas link chains out of multi-colored strips of paper, that Gram Jewell had cut out for me from the Sunday comics section of the local newspaper. I was six or seven years old, and even back then, I loved doing things as big as practical. So I was bound and determined to make the longest paper chain anyone had ever seen. In that project, I ran out of staples and paper strips numerous times, and had to beg Pap and Gram to load up that little silver stapler with the red plastic top, with another strip of medium-sized staples.
Well, one day, the grandparents were busy cooking supper or something, and, not wishing to wait for them to finish their current tasks and help me, I decided to add more staples myself. The actual adding went okay, and I snapped the red lid back down into place, just as I’d observed both grandparents do many times. But then, I don’t know what possessed me. But I wondered what it would feel like to staple my thumb. This was no accident; I didn’t just inadvertently staple it while doing the chain links. No, I deliberately set out to experience it, and at that time, I honestly had no idea that it would hurt as badly as it did. But I sure found out in a hurry when I applied as much pressure to the stapler as I could muster, while my right thumb was, palm side up, precisely positioned just beneath the stapler’s discharge port. Yow!
I don’t recall any blood. So I must have stopped pressing as soon as the pain started, but too late to head off the torturous pain of two pin-like points coursing into my flesh. I cried profusely, and Gram came running into the living room where I said, Indian-style, on her blue and tan Persian rug, balling. By then, I’d removed the stapler and the staple it left behind as well. But she soon deduced what had happened; the two little holes in my thumb turned red right before her eyes.
I think she felt bad for not having warned me that staplers could be dangerous or at least, quite painful if misused. But she never had to caution me about them after that experience either, for I then knew implicitly, to keep fingers away from the mouth. This was the first time I’d learned about respecting tools, and I’m certain that this little lesson some forty-two years ago, has preserved my appendages numerous times since. With all the opportunities I’ve had over the intervening decades to injure myself with power tools, fortunately, I’ve never done so. Indeed, no tool, either before, or since, ever hurt so much as that little red Swingline stapler. 