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how david letterman saved my left hand

Patrick Fealey

i once ate pizza every night, bought $50 books i never read and kept the fridge stocked with cocaine. then i quit college. got a job in an injection-molding plant, second shift. pressed the same two buttons at the exact same time three-thousand times a night for a buck over minimum wage. out came plastic earpieces for glasses and those plastic microwave thermometers people stick in turkeys. the buttons were overhead and about two feet apart. you had to use both hands and you had to press them simultaneously for the machine to work. the design was to prevent crushed hands, law suits, workman’s comp, any bleeding that might occur on their million-dollar machines. but i figured out how. by using a pen in my mouth and standing on my toes, i could press the left button with the pen and simultaneously the right button normally (or the other way around, but i think you’ll find most people would prefer to lose their left hands.) i had the time. eight hours a night, three-thousand chances, five days a week and headed nowhere and in need of a yacht and my own private island, but i hung on to my left hand. i’d drive home in time for letterman. mom left dinner leftovers warming in the oven. i watched letterman with the volume down low because my father could hear a spider plant sneeze. i sat in the dark eating roast chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans and almonds, laughing at letterman’s first episodes. the thing i liked most about letterman, more than his jokes, his grin, how he grilled guests, or his band, was how he made not knowing what the hell he was doing look so respectable.

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