The Not-So-Handy Man

First, let me be clear that I'm not talking about myself. I am very handy, I can fix many things, including but not limited to automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles, anything held together with rope, most anything fastened together with screws, and especially anything involving dirt, grass, or greenery of any kind. I just choose not to do those things because I used to make my living doing that kind of stuff and I vowed that when I had a profession I would never again do those things unless it was for pleasure. And they don't please me. But I can do them, and do them well.
   The not-so-handy man is the handyman. The guy who I call when I have problems with the house I'm renting. That's the beauty of renting, any major repairs aren't yours to take care of. Sweet.
   Anyhoo, I had a problem replacing fluorescent lights in my kitchen. For the record, I loathe fluorescent lights in kitchens, they're the bane of civilized existence. If I owned the house those crap-tacular tubes would be the first to go. But I don't own the house so I cant' rip the fixtures out, a downside of renting.
   Turns out you have to remove the molding around the fixture to get the bulbs out, a design flaw in my opinion, but that's where the handyman comes in. As I was helping him out, holding the new tubes and whatnot, I noticed that his right index finger was missing the very last fingerbone,* the pointy part of your pointer finger. Something he did a while back caused it to come off, probably an accident with a bandsaw, that's usually how people lose fingerbones. I tried not to stare, but failed miserably as I wondered how he managed to cut off part of himself, and what he did when he noticed it was gone. Did he scream? Curse? Cry? Run for help? Rage at a God who would let him cut off his own finger? All this was running through my mind, but I didn't say anything. And I couldn't take my eyes off it.
   So the question here is: does his finger-less condition speak to his experience as a handyman or his lack of experience?
   You get good judgement from experience and you get experience from exercising bad judgement. So which side of the equation does cutting off part of your own finger put you?
   I still don't have an answer for this one. Anybody got any ideas?

* the distal phalanx, for you physicians or Latin scholars.