Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, I have a severed nerve in my left hand, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.

The summer that I was 15 was also spent mostly at my grandparents house. I found a job bagging groceries at a nearby IGA grocery store, and my grandparents also kept me busy with yardwork. My grandparents lived on a corner lot that also had a large storm water drain that ran behind the house. Because that area of their property was designed to funnel water, it was easy for it to become overgrown with weeds, brush, and small trees. At the beginning of the summer my grandpa told me that by the end of the summer, he wanted me to have all the unwanted vegetation cleared out.

This area of the yard had been cleared out before, and the stump of a large bush was evidence of what had once been cleared away. Grandpa asked me to get rid of the stump as part of my cleanup job. One day while working on the stump, I was using my hands to scoop away dirt so I could get a better look at the roots. What I soon realized was a piece of aluminum was also buried in the soil, and as I scooped away the dirt, the metal sliced the middle finger on my left hand. 

I winced in pain as I felt the metal slice through my skin. Blood began pouring out from the wound and I quickly got up and ran into the garage. I yelled through the garage door for my grandma and she quickly came to the door. Sensing something was wrong, she hesitated at opening the door.

“Everything okay?” she said. 

“Open the door please” I replied.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Grandma, just open the door!”

Now, with panic in her voice she said, “Darrell, what’s wrong?!”

And with much frustration I sternly replied, “Grandma, I’ve cut my hand, please open the door!”

At that point she opened the door and saw a very bloody mess. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” she said. My grandma would often call out to Jesus in moments of need. This was not a moment of using his name in vain, but rather a quick and desperate prayer.

She rushed me over to the kitchen sink to clean the wound and stop the bleeding. The cut was deep. We both soon realized that the bone in my finger was visible. She quickly wrapped my hand in a roll of paper towels, helped me to the car, and rushed me to the emergency room.

The doctor got my hand stitched up and confirmed that I’d cut my finger all the way to the bone, slicing through the main nerve that went up that side of my finger. He told me that it was unclear if it would ever fully heal and that I may have permanent nerve damage. Sure enough, to this day, that side of my finger feels like it’s asleep and if I hit the scar just right, it feels like a powerful and painful electric shock is going through my hand.

That, I assure you, was NOT a happy accident! 

Doing yard work at my grandparents house was not uncommon. As soon as my brother and I were big enough to push a mower, we’d been mowing their grass. Because they were on a corner lot, they had a fairly big yard in the front and the back. As we got older, grandpa showed us how to use the electric hedge trimmer and he’d have us do that task as well. At home we lived out in the country and used a riding mower to take care of the acre and a half of land we kept mowed, but at our grandparents house, a push mower would do the job.

In those earliest summers, grandpa had a no-frills basic push mower. But one day we showed up and he had a new mower that he was excited about. It was a Toro brand mower and it had a self-propelled drive system. This meant that while we’d still be pushing the mower, the mower would also use power from the engine to propel itself, making our job easier. I’ll never forget the big smile on his face as he showed it to us.

My brother Nathan went first and mowed his half of the lawn. Once he was done, it was my turn. I took off from the porch and made my way along the sidewalk that led from their porch to the street. There I took a left turn and headed toward the corner of the street. I rounded the corner and aimed the mower toward the driveway. I then turned the mower back toward the house and pushed it up the incline along the driveway. Once there I turned to flank the house and the hedges we’d be trimming soon. My next turn was at the front corner of the house that would bring me back to the front porch. But as I prepared to make the turn I heard a loud crunch and the mower suddenly stopped. 

I knew immediately what had happened. I’d ran over a small stump. This was not the same stump that would slice my finger a few short summers later. This stump was the remnant of a bush my grandpa had cleared out a few years earlier. I knew this stump very well. I’d carefully navigated around it a hundred times while walking or playing football in their yard. I’d probably mowed around it dozens of times. But for reasons I’m not clear about, on that day, I plowed right into it.

Grandpa heard the sound and came out to see what happened. He freed the mower from the stump and examined the mower. Minutes later he told me that I’d broken the mower and I’d have to finish the job using the old mower. And so I did.

Weeks later it was time to mow the grass again, and I reached for the Toro. To my surprise, grandpa told me that it was broken. I told him that I thought he’d fixed it. He told me that I’d seized up the motor when I ran over the stump and there was no way for it to be fixed. Like the Titanic, I’d sunk his new mower before it even finished her maiden voyage.

Here’s what I learned.

A few weeks ago I told you about Mark and Donna, a young couple that lived down the road from us who owned a couple of Saint Bernards. We’d often play basketball with Mark out in his driveway. One day while playing basketball my brother took a shot that bounced off the rim and hit the rain gutter on Mark’s house, breaking it. Mark didn’t get mad at all. My brother felt bad, but Mark told him not to worry about it because it was an accident.

A few months later my brother tried to dunk the ball and it bounced off the rim, again striking the gutter and breaking it. This time Mark got up and let my brother have it. Nathan reminded Mark that he’d broken the gutter before and Mark didn’t get mad. Mark told Nathan that the difference was the intent. When Nate broke the gutter the first time, it was just a simple accident as part of playing the game. 

However, when he’d broken the gutter the second time, that was not the case. Mark had a rule that we were not allowed to dunk on his goal so that nothing got broken. Nathan violated that rule, and therefore his disrespect of the rules is what caused the gutter to break.

Thinking back about the mower, I see a similar reaction in my grandpa. I think I was mostly surprised at the fate of the mower because grandpa hadn’t yelled at me when I broke it. Because he didn’t yell at me, I thought it was something that could be fixed. I mean, I felt like I deserved to be yelled at. While I didn’t intentionally run over the stump, I knew it was there. 

I think grandpa knew I was genuinely sorry, but he also knew that the result of my actions was going to end up impacting me more than it would him. After all, I’d have to go back to using the old no-frills mower to get the job done.

Both of these men taught me that yelling is not always the answer and that there is value in evaluating every situation for facts and context. Mark’s explanation of why he got angry the second time versus the first time was really insightful for me. Sometimes there are happy accidents such as when you’re playing a game of hoops and a rogue bounce causes damage. Other times there are unhappy accidents that are the result of careless behavior.

As a parent, I have tried very hard to keep this principle in mind. I haven’t always been good at keeping my emotions in check so that I can assess the situation objectively, but when I have been able to check myself, my kids and myself have been better for it. We are all going to mess up and cause accidents, especially the youngest among us. Like Mark, when we take the time to not only separate ourselves from the raw emotion of the moment, but also explain to our kids why we’ve chosen specific judgments, we equip our kids to have the knowledge and understanding to make better decisions and impact the way they will one day parent their kids.

And when we forget this principle and mess up with our kids, we also need to teach them about admitting when we’re wrong and apologizing.

I’m extremely grateful for the impact my grandpa and Mark each had on my life. I’m a better parent because of them, and I’m hopeful my kids will be even better parents than I am. After all, isn’t that our goal as parents to help them be better humans than we are?

I’m Darrell Darnell, and this has been Stuff I Learned Yesterday.

I want you to be a part of the next Monday Mailbag coming up in 3 weeks on December 30th! Monday Mailbag is your opportunity to Share what YOU’VE learned, so that other listeners and I can learn from YOU.  It can be a message as short as 30 seconds or several minutes long.  It really doesn’t matter just as long as it’s something that will benefit others.  You can send in questions or responses to my SILY episodes, and I’ll respond to them via Monday Mailbag episodes. You can participate in Monday Mailbags by visiting the Golden Spiral Media listener feedback page.