Shop Teachers and Missing Fingers

I've been looking around the blogsphere and I have come to the conclusion that I need to start including some pictures. I've got quite a few projects around the house herethat I'm proud of, and I think that I'm going to start sharing them. Look for them in the coming days. I also think that I'm going to be linking to other sites.

In the meantime, I had a question posed to me today that I need help answering. Why did the shop teacher in junior high and high school always have a portion of a finger missing?

It was certainly true at Davidson Jr Hi when I was a student there and it also was true again when I taught school at Carlson High School. Is it a requirement? Is it a sacrifice that must be made to get into a secret society? If you had a choice, wouldn't it be better to lose a toe instead?