I needed some glass for a frame, so I looked through my stack of accumulated glass down at one end of the painting rack and found only one piece large enough. Usually I find one of the right size, but this one needed a good piece taken off one side. No problem. I dug down in my tool kit and found some old glass cutters from way back. They dated from when I had a frame shop in Athens Georgia some 40 years ago. Tool kits are wonderful things and I have tools in there dating to my childhood from my Dad's basement workshop. He was a mathematician but loved working with his hands.
This kit has followed me all these years through various careers. It was part of my prop kits that I rented to a production whenever I was hired as Propmaster. I've got other kits: one for graphics/drafting; another for calligraphy with all my inks and pens; my Plein Air painting kit usually rides with its dolly in the back of my truck along with easel, stools, & pop-up canopy. Kits always gave me work-- I was hired to work on a film drafting sets and doing scenic painting the third day after I moved out west to Hollywood--All because of my portfolio & my kit allowed me to get immediately to work.
So, I set the glass sheet on the worktable, marked it with a grease pencil, put a little 3-in-1 oil on the cutter and prepared to cut. I know how to do this. I used to do this back in the frameshop before we got a big wall-mounted glass & board cutter. I got that long piece of sliding-door track that I use for making long lines and with a remembered practiced backhand zipped the cut across the glass, hearing that old familiar sound of steel wheel scoring a straight, true and perfect line. It felt good that I knew how to this so well, so professionally, with a fluidity that felt good. Now I slid the sheet so the cut was just over the edge of the table, readying to bend the glass ever so slightly and have it break off clean, sharp, neat. I held the sheet to the table top with one hand and gently bent the rest at the break-line.
And it shattered in a hundred different pieces.
Pride goeth before the fall.
It was not unlike that day 25 years ago (Cinco De Mayo, 1990), when I fell out of a tree. The Zen Center (ZCLA) maintenance staff wanted to cut down this tree, but I argued that it only needed to be trimmed back, and heck, I could do it myself. They acquiesced and I found myself with a saw high up, one foot on the edge of a garage roof, the other on an extension ladder leaning against the tree trunk. The branch (six-inch round) I was sawing broke off and instead of falling to the ground jumped out and hit me in the chest, knocking me off the ladder sideways. I fell down to the poolside cement and shattered my right foot. I was a year on crutches, then a cane and could no longer work on my feet as a Propmaster, a job I loved.
Perhaps if I had not worn flimsy canvas topsiders but above-the-ankle workboots not unlike the orthopedics I wear now, the damage may not have been so severe or not occurred at all. Perhaps if I had a safety line attached to the tree like tree trimmers do-- perhaps if I had let the professionals handle it.
Pride Goeth Before the Fall.
But then....
If I had not fallen out of that tree, I might not have returned to teaching, which I still do to this day, and love. I would not have taught that year (on crutches) a pastel portraiture class at Santa Monica College Extension and therefore never had met the woman in that class to whom I've been married for 22 years. We might not have moved to Monterey/Santa Cruz and found a wonderful home in the woods. All because of a fall.
