The Precrastinator and I, with assorted helpers, were on the third day of a volunteer job, installing fiberglass insulation in the ancient rafters above the back room of the charity used book store my wife manages.

“Honey, I’m going to need a little first aid,” I called out, holding my hand to my bloody forehead and heading toward my wife’s voice through the narrow aisles of full bookshelves. She was holding forth in the front room of the store and her voice carries.

“Fred’s bleeding like a stuck pig!” The Precastinator helpfully chimed in.

“Are you going to need stitches?” Honey yelled back.

“How should I know? I can’t see it,” I said. The hammer hit me in the middle of my forehead. All I knew was it was bleeding profusely and raising a lump.

Honey, never a coddler, said wasn’t it funny that a few minutes ago she had pulled a staple out of the hand of one of the helpers, and now I had gotten myself hurt. We never did figure out how he managed to stable his own hand. She went next door to the thrift shop to borrow needle-nose pilers to pull it out. The operation finished him for the day.

My retired veterinarian wife gave me a tissue and told me to apply pressure as she launched into how she hadn’t had to stitch anyone up for several years until the other night when she put two sutures in the thumb of our son-in-law Snickers. He sliced it on the lid of a nacho cheese can while working the middle school basketball concession.

My forehead quickly quit bleeding. I think the swelling stopped it. Honey took a look and said maybe it could stand a stitch but why bother?

“After your skin cancer surgeries your face couldn’t look much worse,” she said.

She put a Band-Aid on it and I went back to work.

I admit it is not a good idea to leave a hammer loose on top of a stepladder, but I had forgotten a hammer holder for my belt and planned to go right back up with another batt of insulation, just as soon as I scooted the very old, tall, wooden stepladder down the wall. I suspect the ladder was original to the old building in which we were working. The young men who first trod its rungs might have gone off to World War I.

The project goal was to prevent all the heat from a brand-new heating system from simply disappearing up through the open spaces of the old warehouse behind the book store. It was dirty, difficult work, which when added to “charity” and “volunteer” just about qualify The Precrastinator and me for sainthood. And now I was wounded.

The old stepladder was very loose in its joints. I was not stupid enough to use it unfolded. It was perfectly safe if leaned against the wall and was just the right height. I brought two ladders of my own, The Precrastinator brought two, and I found two modern ladders in the warehouse. I think we used them all.

I like ladders. They are on Honey’s list of things I am no longer allowed to buy at yard sales.

It was a surprise when the hammer hit me on the head, but then, aren’t all accidents a surprise by definition? Something – a sound, laggard preservation reflex – must have caused me to look up, which is why the hammer hit me square in the forehead. I looked down to see if it was my own hammer that hit me, and there it was on the floor. Within two seconds I knew what had happened and why.

We call our handywoman The Precrastinator because she is the opposite of a procrastinator. if you suggest fixing or building something, it’s done before you finish talking. For this job she was outfitted in a mask and hazmat suit because of the fiberglass. My precautions were wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a ballcap. Fiberglass used to make me itch, but not anymore. I looked it up on the Owens Corning website, which bragged that its fiberglass insulation is “virtually itch-free.” I told The Precrastinator. She said she must be allergic.

The mining of sand from the pure Oriskany and Tuscarora deposits is centered around Berkeley Springs, W.Va., and is the largest source for making fiberglass insulation, Pyrex dishes and so on. It once fueled the state’s fabulous glass-blowing companies like Fostoria. Blenko Glass is among a few survivors. Fun fact.

It took us five half-day sessions to hang a beautiful new fiberglass insulation ceiling from the dirty, nail-studded rafters in the back room of the book store, which now stays too warm and the front room seems too cold.

My head healed quickly. I didn’t even have a headache, possibly because there isn’t much in there to damage.

The 747 told me, “Grandpa, don’t do that again. You can’t spare any brain cells.”