The Finger
Full disclosure: I was witness to most of this story but not all of it. For ease of reading, I’ve cobbled together various points of view, so when I write “I” or “me,” it might mean “we” or “us.” Also, I’ve told this story hundreds of times. It has absolutely evolved with the telling, but the bones remain true.
It took a minute to realize it was a finger. But we’ll get to that.
Most of us were sophomores on junior varsity, and we couldn’t dunk on regulation rims, so we took our testosterone out on the eight-foot courts at an elementary school. We abused the breakaway rims and chain nets with a complete disregard for public school funding (or lack thereof). The janitor tried to salvage the nets by taping what was left of them to the rusted rims. Pieces of tape and chain were always flying off when one of us posterized another.
We’d dribble-drive down the lane, rise up above the eight-foot rim, cock the ball behind our heads, and do our best impression of a then-young Shaquille O’Neal. What we wanted for in athletic prowess, we made up for in spirited trash talk. As we hung from the rims, we’d punctuate our dunks with the poetry of the blacktop. “You’re my bitch!” or “How do these nuts taste!?” were perennial favorites.
I’m forty-five years old and these pickup games where we utterly disparaged each other still count among my warmest memories. We made fun of each other for everything, and nothing was off limits. During any given game, you could expect to be denigrated for the following:
Your lack of speed, strength, agility, or any other athletic marker.
Your failure to demonstrate swagger, flavor, wit, or any other stylistic intangible.
Your race—every game was an inadvertent audition for a Blazing Saddles sequel.
Your mother’s real, perceived, or entirely fabricated promiscuity.
And your inadequate penis, particularly length but also infrequency of use and/or frequency of solitary use.
Like a good comedy roast, the better the burn, the more affectionate the subtext.
So, the finger. A guy named Kris threw down a two-handed dunk on no one in particular and so leveled a general insult at the opposing team in general. “Suck these big white balls!” he said. And then he let go of the rim, and it snapped back up as usual, which is when I saw what I assumed was a piece of tape or chain somersaulting threw the air. But it wasn’t tape or chain. It was Kris’s finger. The ring finger of his left hand.
He wore a ring that his mom had given him, a promise ring to remain virtuous until marriage or something like that. Of course, we teased him mercilessly for that. Adding injury to insult, when he let go of the rim, the ring caught the chain net. Gravity did what gravity does, and when the unstoppable force of his descending body met the immovable object of his would-be chastity, it popped his finger right off.
I had never really seen anything that horrible, so it took a moment to realize what had happened. Kris was yelling, more angry than anything. “This shit always happens to me!” he screamed. I remember counting the rest of his fingers and thinking, It seems like it’s only happened to you the one time. Looking back, as an older man, I can appreciate the hyperbole that’s manifested in moments of stress, say, during a tough day at work or a plumbing emergency or when your mother fucking finger gets yanked off.
I don’t remember a lot of blood. Just a few drops here and there on the court and a little around the bone, which looked less like a bone to me and more like a white stick. The finger was perfectly intact, looking a lot like one of those gimmick fingers magicians use to conceal silk handkerchiefs.
This was in the early-ish nineties, so we didn’t have cell phones, and we had been dropped off at this school by our parents. The plan was to walk home when we had had our fill of dunking and insults. All of which to say, we had to flag someone down. And we did. It happened to be a guy we knew from school, a senior who actually had a license and a car. We all piled in, most of us in varying stages of shock, and just as we pulled out of the parking lot to head to the hospital, someone said, “Wait, who’s got the finger?”
The senior flipped a u-turn back into the school parking lot and two of us ran back to the courts to get the finger. We found it on the ground, and the conversation went like this:
“Pick it up.”
“I’m not picking it up, you pick it up.”
“Somebody’s gotta pick it up.”
“Yeah, but why do I have to pick it up?”
“Dude, we have to get to the hospital, just pick it up.”
A macabre Mexican standoff ensued until finally someone introduced a little reason and sanity into the conversation.
“Play for it?”
“Shit. Fine.”
“Two outta three?”
“Yup.”
Cue a pretty high stakes game of roshambo.
“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.”
“Damn it.”
“Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.”
“Three outta five?”
“Fuck no. Pick up the finger.”
So a guy named Dave picked up the finger and held it in the palm of his hand as he rode in the backseat. His hands were shaky the whole way. He would later say, “I was so nervous I was biting Kris’s fingernail.”
The problem with where lived is that the closest thing to anything resembling a hospital was twenty miles away. The problem with our ride was that he was a high school senior with limited funds and an empty gas tank. So we had to pull into a gas station and pan handle for gas money.
In the mean time, a few of us went into the gas station convenience store to get a cup of ice for the finger. The attendant was reluctant to give us the cup and for good reason. We regularly terrorized the convenience stores in our town. We’d fill a 64-ounce cup with king-sized candy bars, top it with ice, and fill it with a concoction we referred to as a Suicide—essentially nine different liquid flavors of high fructose corn syrup. Not only did we make a mess, we were paying .99 cents and escaping with fourteen dollars worth of diabetes. Funny thing about a severed finger, though, when you show it to people, they generally get out of your way.
So we got some gas, we got the finger in an ice bath, and we got to the hospital. Because the finger had been yanked and not severed, the ligaments and tendons weren’t salvageable. They tried to borrow some material from Kris’s foot, but it didn’t take. Kris ended up losing the finger.
My dad, who is a Grateful Dead fanatic, reminded Kris that Jerry Garcia was also missing a finger, which put him in excellent company. Kris replied with the words, “Oh, really? Cool.” But Kris’s face communicated different words, a string of expletives and a suggestion for several things that my dad and Jerry Garcia could shove up their asses.
Kris missed a few days of school, and our coach bought a get-well card and asked us all to sign it. Of course, we had the emotional intelligence and maturity of, well, tenth graders, so we just drew pictures of four fingered-hands with blood squirting everywhere and wrote things like, “Ha ha, get well asshole.” Or “Look at the bright side. You have a smaller hand now that will match your small penis.” Of course, the subtext was, “We hope you’re all right. We love you. Can’t wait for you to dunk on our heads again.” Kris returned, finger be damned. He continued to play basketball and football for the JV and Varsity squads.
Recently my son and two of his friends spent a week with my mom and dad at the river. I called to check in and see how they were doing. My mom said, “They’re having a blast. They constantly shit on each other. You can tell they love each other so much.” Yeah. Sounds about right.
Thanks for reading! If you’ve smiled or laughed, consider upgrading to paid to bankroll more smiles and laughs.
And if you haven’t read some my other stories, here’s a curated list of barn-burnin’ hilarity:
Avocado of Doom: A story about what happens when avocado toast goes sideways.
Bats, Buttloads, and BB Guns: The source of my wife’s trauma dump.
The Lifesaving Virtues of Super Glue: Canyon bobcats, a storm, and my wife’s embodiment of Snow White.
A Spicy Alternative to Antidepressants: You’ll never order at another taco truck without thinking of this story.
Claw and Disorder: If you’ve ever waited tables, you’ll relate. If you’ve never waited tables, you' probably never will after reading this.
Let me hear it! Particularly if you have any similar stories of a high stakes game of roshambo.
Poor guy no more high fives
Omg! Did this finger episode REALLY happen?? Hilarious card comments and the gamble on who should’ve picked up the finger!! Brilliant, Norm!! Thx!! AGAIN!!🤣