Nothing good happens after midnight. 7a.m. is after midnight. In fact, it’s seven hours afterwards, and let me tell you, seven hours makes a hell of a difference, especially if you’re planning on operating heavy machinery for summer basketball weight training. They really should come up with a better system for racking weights, as if some of them aren’t heavy enough already; they shouldn’t let gravity have its way with them like it did with King Kong in New York City. It didn’t work out so well for the big fella.

Shrugs are meant to work the trapezius, but it is known to a weight lifter that they also test grip strength. If you can’t hold on to the iron dumbbells, how are you supposed to practice dumbfounded body language with your shoulders? You can’t shrug your shoulders without a sturdy clench, some sense of utter confusion like a third grader watching Jeopardy, or both in my case. I was stupefied, in a way, while attempting to re-rack 65lb dumbbells on the peculiarly designed weight racks. Both of the dumbbells combined fell short by 5lbs of my total hulking body weight of 135lbs, so it’s no surprise really as to why my finger exploded.

They were slanted at an angle with two metal rungs sticking out for the weights’ hexagonal ends to rest on. The rungs were meant to keep the weights from sliding off, like an engaged parking brake on a hill. My right arm successfully placed the weight down, but the left one—you remember how I told you grip strength is key for shrugs—didn’t take heed of the possible ramifications of not quite engaging the weight-rack’s parking brake mechanism and placed the top of the weight on the rung instead of beyond it.

Hold it right there. Freeze frame. There I was, facing a long row of dumbbells, steadily increasing in weight and size to my left, looking at myself in the mirror that makes up the entire back wall of the gym for the first time that morning—seeing how tired I really was according to the swollen crescent moons below my eyes—and awkwardly standing off balance with my left hand resting the 65lb dumbbell on the precipice of eventual freefall. Only my hand stood in the way of its plunge into the abyss of the black rubber floor beneath. I was standing on my tip-toes, as if those two inches would help lift the weight past the point of no return, and upon the realization of the severity of the situation, I was not unlike Wile Coyote suspended over a desert cliff’s edge, knowing what would happen, yet somehow defying the inevitable for a brief moment of accelerated awareness.

Now, before continuing, a brief lesson in physics is necessary to really understand what happened next. You know how the apple fell on Newton’s head and therein laid the cause of gravity’s discovery? Well, gravity doesn’t just cause things to fall; it causes things to fall and smash. So when the weight slid as I released my Vulcan grip, I instinctively thrust my hand back towards the weight’s handle to stop it. I don’t really believe I’m plugged into the Matrix, at least I don’t really remember having a metal rod plunged into the back of my head causing me to wake in the realm of the blue pill, but I think I may still have believed in the whole “being able to dodge bullets” thing when I made that thrust with my left hand. Needless to say, the weight laughed (I heard it) at my efforts and crushed my finger up against the rung that was supposed to be holding the damn thing on the rack. If anything, I reacted with superhuman speed to permit the weight to crush my finger, though that was obviously not my intention, should you doubt me. I shook my finger after the collision like one typically does after slamming a thumb in a car door, and my teammate horrifically said, “Dom, Dom.” Okay, him saying “Dom, Dom” was not all that horrific, but the way the warm red blood glistened off of his arms and face did work to accentuate the terror-stricken tone of the statement. Following his gaze, I saw a pulsating squirt of blood come out of my finger and splash onto the floor like a child pressing a water fountain’s button over, and over, and over again to find that, yes, water comes out whenever you press the button. Except in my case, the button was my heart, and if that button stops, you stop.

So there I stood, with hot red honey surging out of my birdie finger’s tip with each successive heartbeat (which may have been synced to the beat of Eminem on the iPod I was listening to, but I’m not certain enough of this to declare it as coincidental fact), thinking, wow, this doesn’t hurt as much as it should. Instead of shrieking in panicked trepidation, I merely looked at it in wide-eyed amazement like a five year old daredevil looking up at a roller coaster he is too short to ride. I knew the injury was serious, of course, but the strange correlation between the gruesome appearance of my finger and the miniscule pain experienced shrouded the severity of the injury like a veil on a burn victim. The orthopedic surgeon would say later that morning that it didn’t hurt much because the tip of my median nerve was severed, and irreparably so. To this day I feel nothing in the tip of that finger.

So while my fingertip is decrepit, Newton’s head went on to concoct calculus faster than the average college student learns it and to invent equations pertaining to the cause of both our injuries. I suppose it was only fitting that Einstein turned the world of physics on its head when he disproved much of Newton’s findings. Whether his theoretical error was because of the apple trauma is another matter entirely—I’m no neurosurgeon or any kind of an expert in fruit-induced intraparenchymal hemorrhaging. But is it a coincidence? Who knows how high that apple fell from—I’ve heard a penny falling off the Empire State Building will travel straight through a grown man’s skull like a scalpel through fatty tissue. I’m just saying.

I would also find out later that blood was actually found on the roof of the gym—nearly 15 feet high at this particular establishment—and a HAZMAT crew had to come in to clean up the mess. My finger was broken, but the weight was not. That’s why I’m telling you this story. You see, the apple fell on Newton’s head, and he probably thought, “Oh, a delicious snack from above,” but if a 65lb dumbbell had fallen on his head, he would not have said much (maybe an indiscernible grunt) and our history of physics would probably not include his adventures under apple trees. So the next time you decide to pick something up that requires more than your natural means, remember my finger, envision red-spewing drinking fountains with the spigot as one of your digits, know that gravity is not your friend but your enemy, and be aware that the rack design is its evil accomplice.

Oh, and that nothing good happens after midnight.