Happy Labor Day, internet. Of course, there’s no rest for the babied, so in honor of laborers everywhere, we went to Home Depot three times this weekend and spent lots of money. Home Depot is like that. No matter how hard we try, virtually every trip to that store leaves us $100 poorer.

The third trip was to exchange the replacement bathroom fan motor we bought on the second trip for a better one. The first trip was for a table saw, something I’ve wanted for a while. I’ve actually been putting off buying a stand for my new television because I have some vague, loony, woodworking notion that I can make one, like suddenly I’m Norm Abram, furniture god. A little practice. We’ll see. I’ll either post pictures of my first creation or a bloody stump where my hand used to be. Promise.

When I was about nine, I had a terrible falling-out with a table saw. My brother and I were arguing in the garage about the direction the blade on my Dad’s saw turned. Unknown to me, he was taking a pragmatic approach and was underneath the machine plugging it in. He didn’t know my hand was on the blade when he switched it on. I never did ask how hard it was to clean all the blood out of it.

Fortunately, the blade didn’t really get into me. It only cut about half-way through my palm and didn’t sever any major nerves or bones or fingers. It basically just left me bloody and hurt but I made a full recovery. The doctors said I was lucky. It could have crippled my hand. Who knows how my life would have turned out single-handed or nine-fingered.

So it was with some trepidation and much respect that I assembled the saw. I experienced a brief gush of exultation when I cut my first scrap. Then my son tottered in behind me, curious what I’d been up to for the past 90 minutes, and suddenly I had to protect him from this monster I’d willingly brought into the house. What was I thinking? I think I yelled at him. He ran off.

I talked it over with my wife and we decided that it would be better to sternly tell the children to stay away from it and explain the consequences for touching it rather than hope that they’d think it was boring. In addition, it is unplugged, its activation key is hidden, and the blade is safely lowered. They’d have to pull a MacGuyver to hurt themselves with it now.

And in case you were wondering, I won the argument with my brother.