I’m always a bit amazed by how few other guys possess even basic clothing repair skills – buttons pop off and hems begin to come undone with alarming frequency, and knowing how to fix those small problems before they become bigger ones can save substantial time and money over the long haul.

I owe my ability in such areas to my mother, who, on afternoons home from the office, would occasionally pass along such brief lessons in self-sufficiency. And, in each lesson, as much as I’d learn how to, say, mend an emerging hole, I’d also re-learn that an unused needle should always be threaded with at least a short length of thread.

This second bit was of paramount importance, emphasized heavily along with the story of how my mother’s cousin (or possibly her aunt – I usually tuned out for this oft-told tale) had once not done so, and had stepped on a needle that slipped completely into a vein, coursing along before lodging itself (fortunately) somewhere in her upper leg, thereby avoiding its natural route up to impaling her heart in a Separate Peace sort of tragedy.

While my mother to this day views the needle-in-the-vein story as incontrovertible fact, the more I learned about basic biology, the more I realized there was no way the yarn could actually be true. I mean, veins are remarkably circuitous, and not terribly broad in most places. To think that an inch-and-a-half long stretch of rigid metal could mistakenly end up squarely in the middle of one, much less run luge-like all the way to your ticker, I quickly realized was essentially impossible.

Still, to this day, and despite the protestations of my rational mind, I run a short length of thread through any needle in my possession. Just in case.