HERB BENHAM: Middle finger will heal; misunderstandings will take time
| Monday, Nov 02 2009 02:43 PM
Last Updated Monday, Nov 02 2009 02:43 PM
I broke my middle finger recently. You may be familiar with the finger, it's the big one -- Finger No. 3. -- between the thumb and index on one side and the ring and the pinky on the other.
Yes, that finger. The finger with an attitude. The middle finger is to the finger family what Patrick Henry was to the Revolutionary War.
I was standing up, paddleboarding north of Ventura (the board is as big as the Kon-Tiki and the surfer stands up and propels himself across the water with the aid of a paddle).
I was tired, lost my balance and fell forward on the board. Rather than do a face-plant, I led with my hands and buried the middle finger of my right hand into the top of the board, snapping the top digit.
It didn't hurt, but it didn't look appetizing either. I had floppy finger, which, left untreated, had an artistic bent to it. Floppy finger was handy if I were a docent in a museum standing in front of a painting pointing to a squirrel at the bottom of the canvas.
The finger required medical attention so I employed the services of Dr. Benham. Dr. Benham was available, as he always is. His office was empty and there was nobody in the waiting room.
"Do you have any duct tape?" Dr. Benham asked the shirtless surfer with the generous gut whose car was parked next to the one he arrived in.
He did not, but doctor located some black electrical tape which allowed him to tape two fingers together until he arrived home and could avail himself of a pharmacy and further medical care.
After a visit to CVS pharmacy, the black electrical tape, which by now had dyed the finger blacker than midnight, was replaced with a metal splint. The idea was to straighten the finger so it could heal in its natural position.
I've learned something. Keeping the middle finger straight is difficult. While many people have no problem snapping it to attention should the circumstances call for it, keeping it there can be challenging.
This is why, I suppose, people opt for casts. A cast is outside of Dr. Benham's field of expertise and would have required a visit to a second doctor. This was fine. Dr. Benham likes his doctor and shares a collegial relationship with him that the profession sometimes engenders.
However, there was one problem. If he put a cast on the middle finger, it meant the finger would jut forth in the permanent, "I salute you" position until the cast was removed.
Lively scenarios were easy to imagine. Say I was riding in a car on the passenger side, and saw Father Craig standing on the sidewalk in front of his church on H Street. I might smile and wave to him and, before I knew it, his head would be down, he would be crossing himself and reciting 10 Hail Marys.
I could be walking to Sequoia for lunch and passing in front of the district attorney's child support division. I might lift my right hand in order to scratch my forehead when a large man with a neck tattoo was leaving the D.A.'s office after a meeting with his ex that had not gone well.
I could go to dinner at my in-laws, be greeted at the door by John, put my right hand forward and the evening would have begun on an off note and we hadn't even talked politics yet.
In other words, it would be easy to forget. Easy to forget even when the middle finger was in a splint, which was what I opted for in lieu of the more aggressive finger cast.
A couple of days ago, I was driving west on 24th Street. I wanted to turn left on Oak Street, but in order to do so, I had to move over two lanes. This required flagging the driver in the tan pickup truck next to me with my good hand and asking him if I could move ahead of him.
He was kind enough to slow down, let me change lanes and I raised my right hand to thank him. He gave me a puzzled look. I tried to mouth the word "finger" but in retrospect, it would have been better if finger hadn't started with an "f."
He sped off. Once the finger heals, I have work to do.
