No, I Didn't Break it. I Swear.

I am unsure as to whether or not I have spoken of my profession. I am a cabinetmaker. I work in a wood shop, and build whatever my superiors tell me too. This involves cabinets, moldings, drawers, and in one case jewelry-twirly-thingies (furniture that assists in the making of crocheted and knitted accessories).

My job also requires me to run a half-dozen or so machines. Not only do I build stuff, but I machine the parts as well. And this is where our story begins....

Today, I was using a sander. We call it The Time Saver. A large, six-foot tall and five-foot wide thing with two sanding belts roughly 3 feet by 4 feet that run inside of it (bear in mind that these dimensions are while the belts are looped, not opened to full length). Anyways, enough with these boring details. Let's make a long story short:

One of the sanding belts broke while I was feeding a piece of poplar into the machine. To be perfectly blunt, I broke a sanding belt.

I have never in my life heard a machine make a noise quite so horrific and deafening. I almost impaled myself on the piece of wood I was sanding in my rush to hit the emergency stop button. After pulling approximately four or five armfuls of shredded sanding-belt out of the machine, and making sure that the new belt I had chosen wouldn't result in a second disaster, I finished my work.

And as I brought the freshly-milled wood to my bench, I was greeted by my co-workers with a round of applause.

This is how we do it, baby.