Unsafe Wherever You Go

So I set my old Roland Juno-106 synthesizer up for the first time in years and one of the first things I noticed was this piece of adhesive wrap from a Bob Dylan CD stuck to the face of the instrument. I remember sticking it there one Valentine's Day, many years ago...I had just broken up with my short-term girlfriend and had purchased  'Blood On The Tracks' as a consolation gift to myself. The rest of that day is a little blurry.

Not long after setting up the keys, I was carelessly trying to unplug a cable from the rear of my PC. The tower has two open expansion slots where I briefly added a sound and a  video card...the strip of metal in-between the two bays has a razor edge. It was so sharp that I didn't even feel it at first, it wasn't until I started bleeding on my keyboard that I realized I had sliced my finger on my computer.

It wasn't  at all serious, but it was a little messy. Of course, I had to capture the moment for posterity before I cleaned it and applied a bit of pressure. I'm tough like that.

I returned my attention to the keyboard and found it to be in appalling condition. The jack where the power cord should be attached was gone. I have no idea were it went...I was drunk for ten years, things disappeared. But I just cannot seem to reconstruct the events leading to the removal of that cable plug.

I found an old vacuum cleaner cord, stripped one end off of it and used stray bits of scotch tape and post-it notes to attach the cord to the wires inside of the synthesizer. I wasn't sure what to do with the loose ground wire...should I ground it to the chassis of the keyboard? To the metal tubing of the  keyboard stand? To my belt buckle?  I wound up capping it off with aluminum foil and shoving it back inside the contraption.

Then I took a quick shower. It was hot and humid and I was having a hard time getting dry, so I stood on a wet towel while I powered up my old friend, not wanting to drip water on my pristine floor and all that.

It worked.

I celebrated my accomplishment with a pair of pippins and a tuna sandwich, after which I felt an urgent compulsion to floss. When I went to pull a length of waxy string from the dispenser, the little metal doo-hickey that cuts the floss popped out of the box and landed in the sink.

I picked it up and tried to re-insert it into the package...it didn't fit right, so I decided brute force was probably the best solution and pressed down really, really hard with my thumb. I lost my grip and I wound up puncturing the finger pictured above, which had just finished healing.

Sometimes I wonder...