If I would have Known Better I would…

We have all done something wrong or done something we wish we shouldn’t have. The natural response is, “wow… if I would have known better, I would never had done that”.

When I was young I bet I heard “You know better” or you “should have known better” a thousand times. If the truth were known, I probably did know better.We all have a deep sense of right or wrong. We are born with it. Sometimes we choose to ignore that small, still voice that is inside of us and do the wrong thing anyway. It’s easy to say, “I should have known better”.

I was helping a friend of mine on a small remodeling job on a restaurant a year or so ago. I was outside cutting some small strips off of a piece of ¼” plywood. It was night, so I set the saw up just outside of the front door where I could get some light and went to sawing.

I was concerned the wood might kick back toward me so I was using smaller pieces and not trying to push an entire four-foot by eight-foot sheet through the saw. At some time during the process, one of the pieces of wood began to bind in the saw blade, so I forced it through with one big shove. It made it through the track, but a small slat of wood thrust itself back toward me at what must have been 10,000 mph.

It’s funny how the top edge of the table was just about level with the bottom of my zipper. It struck me with such a force that I was immediately looking up at the table saw and I couldn’t breathe. The pain was so great that I knew that I needed to get inside before I passed out… there was no doubt that I was on my way out.

I looked around to make sure that nobody had seen me and made it into the men’s restroom. I got into the stall and made sure that all of my parts were still attached… luckily they were. Pain was screaming through my entire body and I was sweating like I had run a marathon. Judging by the way my heart was racing… I had run a marathon.

It was a good thing that the stall had handicap bars on both sides of the toilet seat. I had a white-claw grip on both of them. My eyes went black and I couldn’t hold my head up straight. I began to fight with everything I had to keep from passing out. I thought to myself… you died out there in the front entrance and you now in Hell. If there is a Hell, this must be it… and I don’t like it.

I was able to regain my composure after a tough twenty minutes or so and was able to leave the restroom. I thought I would go back to work, but there would be no more work on that night. I walked a little gingerly for a few days but got through it with one thing in mind...

I should have known better… I did know better…

Shannon R Killman