Axe: (n) a hand tool with one side of its head forged and sharpened to a cutting edge

It has been my discovery that trying to tell stories about my physical prowess always leaves the hearers a little suspicious.

Even though this tends to offend me, I have to be honest and say that when I hear others explain to me how strong they are or how powerful they perceive themselves to be, I am torn between laughing out loud and finding a quick way to exit.

Such was my experience with the axe.

When I was a kid, my dad grew some pine trees which we eventually used as Christmas trees for our house, since there weren’t enough of them to ever constitute a good cord of wood.

So it fell my lot one season to go out and chop down the Christmas tree and bring it back to the house.

I was thrilled (as most fools are on the way to the errand).

I had never wielded an axe. Matter of fact, I was quite pleased that I knew using an axe involved wielding.

So when I arrived next to the pine I had selected, I looked at it and noticed that the trunk was really only about five or six inches across. How hard could this be?

Now, I do not know whether the bottom of my pine was made of steel, or if my axe was not made of actual metal–but I must have hacked at that thing for a good twenty-five minutes, never succeeding in hitting the same place twice.

So when it finally tumbled over (glory be to God) the trunk looked like a pencil that a beaver had chewed up.

I carried it back to the car and into the house, found some way to get it into the tree stand, feeling a great sense of accomplishment.

But I can tell you–for the next week and a half, I could not move my arm nor my shoulder, to such an extent that I missed a day of school, to lay in my bed commiserating over my axe fiasco.

So looking for an adequate summary for this tale, I will borrow a bit of wisdom from my African-American brothers and sisters:

I will never again “axe” for an axe.

Thank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix

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