For those who don't want to give me the additional page views by clicking on that link, I was talking about how I openly decided to do something very stupid one day last week: I cut through a weld with a high speed saw. It was something I should not have done once.
I did it three more times yesterday.
The problem with stupid is that if you do it one time and all goes well, it's easy to do it again. And a third time. And a fourth. See, you get comfortable with stupid. You and stupid come to terms. You make a treaty with stupid which you know in your heart stupid will break one day. That's how and why stupid things eventually physically hurt you.
By the time I was making my way through that fourth weld I had almost forgotten the hazard of what I was doing. Then I saw, er, realized that the knuckles of my left hand were within about 3/4 of an inch of the high speed wheel as I held the metal I was cutting through. That knowledge having come upon me, I nearly jerked my hand away, which is precisely what you do not want to do. Sudden motion is when stupid acts with the greatest flair.
Steeling my nerves, I finished that last cut. I fully intend not to do such a thing again. I don't think I'm all that far into the comfort zone with stupid. But time will tell.
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