Protect your thumb!

Every once in a great while, you forget every scrap of common sense and you do something that hindsight screams you shouldn't have.

In my case, it was a matter of a little whittling gone horribly awry.

I did my college best to excavate a chunk of meat from the pad of my thumb with my too-sharp general-purpose knife. As soon as the shock wore off, and I'd mummified my thumb so thoroughly that I looked like the Elastoplast(tm) poster-boy, I realized just how important my right thumb was to my particular style of guitar playing.

In less specific instances, however, it occurs to me that arthritis can be just as debilitating to a player. For this reason, I'd suggest that if you're performing household or workplace jobs, use the best tool for the job, and avoid overuse of your thumbs.

They need to last you a lifetime.