This thought was foremost in my mind as I nursed a wound incurred while working on my FXRT one afternoon. I had been feeling around under the oil pump, looking for a nut that had developed legs when I took it off the rear cylinder exhaust stud. The little buggers will jump down and find hidey-holes, often on top of the structural crossbar between the right and left frame rails.

Anyhow, as I ran my fingers up, down, and around under there, working by feel of course, I managed to create a serious interface between my index finger (actually, the cuticle of the nail) and the end of a piece of safety wire on the bolts that hold the footpeg bracket in place. Ran that sucker right up under the cuticle, I did.

There are two distinct points on the end of the twirl, each with an edge that'll carve diamonds, splayed slightly outwards, and they operate in close conjunction to create their damage. While they can slice when provoked, their genuine strength is in the penetration game. Just a slight touch, and you wind up with a hole that is yards deep, somehow, and about an inch across. Do it just right, catch them going the wrong way, and not only will they dig in deep, they'll hold on as you try to pull back. They're sharper than a mother-in-law's tongue, and oughta be on the OSHA list of hazardous stuff.

Well, as you can guess, I spoke out loud about it in several languages for a while, some unheard since biblical times, as I stood there nursing the finger and dripping blood on my boots. Some neighbors may have thought I was talking to them too, for a couple of old ladies down the block went back indoors, several kids took the long way home from school, and the neighbor's mutt ran for his house.

While I was bandaging it up it occurred to me that as a reliable source of recurring pain over the years, safety wire has been right up there at the top of the list, even ahead of exhaust pipe burns and smashed fingernails.

Then I got to thinking about all the other pain I'd incurred, mostly while working on scooters and such like in the garage.

As we grow older, though, we discover the nuances between discomfort and agony. We'll sit on a motorcyle, for instance, freezing our nuts off, wet to the bone, utterly, completely, and insensibly uncomfortable, and do it voluntarily for the sake of putting down the road. We'll even set out from the house knowing that it's gonna be that way. That's discomfort.

However, I can't think of a time that I voluntarily, for any reason at all, laid my hand on a vice and whacked the tip of my finger with a wrench on purpose; that's pain, and we try to avoid it.

See, it's about discomfort versus reward. Everything in life is a tradeoff, and not too many of us will welcome pain as a tradeoff for something enjoyable.

Except through sheer forgetfulness and ignorance, of course. Those of us who work on our own bikes, or those of friends, usually do it for the enjoyment of making something mechanical turn out right (and impressing our buds, naturally, with the depth of our skills.)

But if we just stopped and considered, we'd realize that sometime along the line it's gonna hurt. And sometimes it's gonna hurt bad! Things like this nearly always come about because we've done something stupid, something we could have avoided if we'd stopped to think for a minute, or just slowed down a little. Pain and stupidity are very closely linked - you can read about it in books.

See, working on machinery requires using, and working with, objects that are large or heavy or sharp, and nearly all are unyielding. This is nothing like sitting in your recliner, beer in hand, and the remote at your fingertips. About the only way to hurt yourself there is to rip your finger little if you get clumsy with twist-off cap on the bottle, and you can even avoid that if you tell her to uncap it before she brings it to you.

 The absolute classic, one I heard about so many years ago I can't even remember, concerns the typical whack on the fingernail that leads to a massive blood pool under the nail, and a throbbing pain so exquisite that it can be seen in colors. (The worst I've had was normally a pulsating red, flashing into violet when I bumped it, or one of my kids, young at the time, grabbed it - out of love and sympathy, I'm sure. It faded to brilliant yellow/orange when I could sit down and hold it over my head, which looked pretty silly sitting in church, but caused all sorts of drinks to be delivered to me at the local watering hole.)

This particular story, which is probably true, is not about me. But it could be. God knows I've done enough similar dumb stuff. You probably have, too.

Now those of you who have done this know the sequence of realization and pain. First you look at the digit, finding it delicately flattened. Then you say to yourself (and anyone else within hearing:) OH SHIT THAT'S GONNA HURT!

Then the blood pressed out of the fingertip by your clumsiness begins to rush back in - and the pain starts. And it gets worse. And it continues to get worse over the next 24 hours as the blood builds up a pool that presses on those tender nerves in the quick of the nail. The colors show up in your mind. You can't sleep at night. You hit the finger on things you haven't even gotten close to in years. You're scared to even unzip your own pants (much less anyone else's.) Desperation develops. You'll do ANYTHING to make it quit throbbing.

Now the pussies among us probably head for the hospital where some nurse will take care of us in the emergency room, muttering to herself about "Tough bikers! HAH!"

Our hero, though, is of the old school, tough, and he possess a drill press and sufficient imagination to realize that if he takes a sharp 1/16th" bit and chucks it up in the press he can drill a hole in the nail. That will let the blood out, and bring blessed relief.

So he gets out his sharpest, smallest bit (probably a dull 5/64ths one if he's anything like me, but that's OK; how hard can it be to drill a fingernail?) and carefully sets it up to run true in the chuck. He absolutely does NOT want any wobble going on. And since he knows there's a potential for infection, he takes the precaution of spitting on it and wiping it off on his sleeve to disinfect it first.

He places a small block of wood on the press table to rest his finger on. He carefully measures the depth of penetration to be allowed by the drill stop on the press - he certainly doesn't want to go too deep.

Finally ready, he turns on the motor and the bit spins brightly, light from the bulb dancing on the twirling tip. His finger rests on the wooden block. His left hand approaches the feed handles, hesitating, then drawing back, then advancing once more, and finally it takes hold of the device.

He begins to lower the bit slooowwwwllllyyyy. He knows that any pressure on the nail is going to hurt like hell, but it will be over in a moment when the hole is through. He bites his lip, awaiting the pain, moving the bit downward.

It touches the nail gently as a mother's kiss, and yes, the pain is there. The drill bites into the nail, then quickly penetrates and . . .

DEVELOPS A SELF-FEED!!! immediately yanking the finger and hand to the top of the bit, ripping the nail loose before flesh yields to steel's strength and the bit spins freely in his finger.

Ahh, agony. A whole new measure of what pain means. We all learn in our own ways.

As I said earlier, that's the absolute classic of it's type. It is excruciating. It is a one-time event (Count on it! All three Stooges couldn't be induced to try it twice.) It involves machinery. And it shows, in undeniable terms, the absolute linkage between actions that seem reasonable, but which are in fact poorly-considered, and pain.