Taking a Table Saw to the Tree of Knowledge

By Bobby Neal Winters

In the cult classic, The Gods Must Be Crazy, a tribe of hunter gatherers finds a Coke bottle, and it is such a strange, versatile object, it sows discord among the tribe, and the bulk of the movie consists of our hero on a journey to get rid of it.

The message of the film is that this primitive tribe, by virtue of taking this action, is wiser than the more “developed” peoples who created the bottle.  

If only you could just throw problems over a cliff and they would disappear into the clouds.

In our tradition, that notion was dealt with early.  When we ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, we were thrown out of paradise, and an angel with a flaming sword was put at its entrance to keep us from going back.

When you learn something new, there is no unlearning it.  The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle.

It is just there.

What the righteous must do is to learn how to deal with it now that you know about it.

We’ve been cleaning out an old house we use for storage. In the course of doing that, we did two things: We found a table saw that belonged to Jean’s father and we cleaned out enough floor space that it could actually be used.

Over the last 32 years I’ve been in town, there have been many occasions when I could have used a table saw.  There have been many occasions when a table saw was exactly what I needed. And on every single one of those occasions I’ve had to figure out some other way to do what needed doing.

I’ve sawed boards in every conceivable awkward position you can imagine.  I could’ve written the kamasutra book of carpentry. Now here within my very grasp is a table saw.

Here’s the thing though:  I don’t know how to use a table saw.

And a table saw is a thing that needs knowing before you use it.

There are two types of people who just read that sentence.  One is confused because a table saw is very simple to use. You plug it in, turn it on, and slide a board across the blade. Very easy.  The second type of person says, yes, and you might very well have a few fingers laying loose when you are done.  (When I looked at the safety videos on this on YouTube, one emergency room physician remarked that reattaching fingers is not quite as easy as you may have been led to believe.)

The table saw is a simple device that you still have to learn to use.

That is true for every single thing that was ever invented.  The invention of the thing is only a small part of the story.  The rest of the story is the world learning the best way to use it.

Consider the knife, or more generally, the cutting edge.  Somebody came upon a sharp piece of flint.  He or she discovered you could cut with it. Somebody else figured out you could kill animals with it. Somebody else discovered you could cut your food into smaller pieces with it. Somebody else discovered you could kill people with it.  Now we’ve got it in operating rooms and wood carving sets.

The thing came into the world; there was no putting it back; then there was learning how to deal with it.

So I am spending some time learning the right way to use a table saw.  I am determined to leave this world with the same number of fingers that I came into it with.  I hope they don’t have to put them in a tupperware dish in the casket with me.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )