ETCHING 101 On the first day of a new semester at Old Dominion College, the art instructor informed us students that we would be making our own etching tools for "DRY POINT ETCHING 101", that by making our own tools we would become "closer" to our work. Dry point etching requires a sharp enough instrument to scratch through a lacquer coating on a metal plate, ultimately producing an inked image when the print is pulled through a lithograph press. I found a six inch long hat pin in a bedroom drawer, and decided to split open a pencil and remove the lead for the etching tool's handle. Then, placing the inverted needle in the hollowed-out pencil tube, I began wrapping the contraption with black electrician's tape. As I held the needle-pencil in my left hand, I tightly wrapped the stretchy tape around and around the wooden yellow handle. Everything was going quite well until the tape suddenly snapped, slamming the needle-thing directly into my heart. I stared down at the throbbing pink eraser as it inscribed tiny ellipses with every heart beat. "This must be it," I remember saying out loud. "This is the way I'm going to die, something really, really--- STUPID!" I began laughing. "Okay, okay... gotta do SOMETHING now. What--- pull it out? Apply direct pressure? No, WAIT! The EMERGENCY room? GOOD idea!" I walked the three blocks to the Norfolk General's emergency room, where I casually walked up to the nurse's station. "I seem to have impaled myself on the point of a homemade etching tool," I explained, letting go of the tape wrapped pencil. The eraser tapped steadily like a miniature metronome. When I was wheeled into an examining room, I watched as a doctor placed one hand on my chest, fingers splayed, and withdrew the etching tool like an archer removing an arrow from a target. One tiny spurt of blood, then a single drop congealed on my chest. Within an hour I was walking back to my apartment with my new etching tool safely in an envelope...