Navy Portsmouth Part III

I like to think that the motives driving people are mostly good and positive. But when the doc suggested it may be time for my index finger to go the way of all flesh, I must confess that the thought crossed my mind that perhaps we were being a bit premature. On the other hand, no one wants a stiff, pokey finger.

On the third hand, it was a lot premature.

Hence, it was a bit of a cringe for me when he described a process where he would carve and sculpt my hand in such a way that (quoting here), "people would hardly notice there was a missing finger". Yes, that's right, he told me that no one would notice.

Well, I would notice!

I don't even like cutting my fingernails and for a reason I can't put my 'finger' on, it makes me uncomfortable to have parts of me separated from other parts.

My family has certainly had their struggles with fingers. Dave, my much handsomer brother decided it would be a good idea to catch a softball between his fingers splitting them apart. My father lost the tip of his pinky in some sort of automotive mechanic accident. And my mother! My mother was throwing away an old fire extinguisher and it caught her middle finger in the handle and the finger went with it. Right off! 

They reattached it, but my family didn't have a stable of top surgeons to work through all the issues, so her finger was... in an amazing case of foreshadowing... stiff and pokey! Oh, my, that's just how the doc said my finger would be! 

On a side note, it didn't strike me when I was younger, but now I can see that if my mother shook her fist at someone, she was automatically giving them the finger.

So, I took it upon myself (see earlier reference to self-reliance) to prove Doctor Davis wrong. I made my way to downtown Portsmouth, which as I remember was about two blocks long, and bought a red rubber ball maybe the size of a tennis ball. 

I squeezed that ball to death. I threw it in the air and caught it. I bounced it. I carried it everywhere. But my favorite use was throwing it against a wall, catching it and squeezing it with my busted right hand. 

The bouncing noise drove people crazy and they responded by throwing things at me until I moved to a different location. I finally found the perfect spot: The maternity floor!

The maternity ward was located on one of the top floors of the main building. It was almost completely empty, rarely used and sealed off effectively from the little lobby where the elevators were. I would sit there in that little elevator lobby and throw the ball against the wall and catch it and squeeze it. For hours. For days. Until my hand was numb.

If anyone ever came up the elevators, I could see that they were coming and when the doors opened, it was just a sailor sitting there. Clearly, I was on a mission. A little devious, but a mission.

Then I was fitted with a hellish device intended to cause great pain and suffering. There are no images available of this mechanism because it was probably banned by the United Nations Human Rights Council. It consisted of a strong spring-loaded contraption that fit over my hand and pushed my broken, unyielding finger down. Hard!

Wooo, that puppy hurt! I could take it for a while and off it came! Over time I could stand wearing it longer and longer. I took it as long as I could take it. And I continued using it for a year, even quite a while after I was discharged.

Meanwhile, every time I had a doctor visit with Doctor Davis he would ask, "Well, are you ready for me to take that finger off?" Geez.