“We repair what your husband fixed.”
Blatant sexism aside, it was a message that hit home. Because I’m one of those husbands who make it possible for handymen to drive the latest model pickup trucks and send their kids to Harvard.
If it drips, I can make it pour. If it’s cracked, I can make it split completely in half. Give me enough time and the right tools, and I can take a moderately rundown house and turn it into “This Old Condemned Property.”
In my defense, part of the problem is that I don’t have the right tools. In my toolbox, there’s a hammer, seven screwdrivers that are exactly the same size and a set of socket wrenches I don’t know how to use.
I could buy more tools, of course, but I don’t speak handyman. When I go to a hardware store, words like “locking flex ratchet wrench” do not come easily to me. I’m not even sure those are real words. Mostly I’m reduced to stammering phrases like, “It’s a tool for the little thing that goes into the, you know, the bigger thing.”
There is some consolation in knowing that I’m not the only guy who can’t do it himself. The makers of Craftsman tools has plans for a reality show featuring guys like me who have “little to no tool skills whatsoever.” Among the guys who auditioned for the show, it’s reported, was one who stuck a radio antenna into an electric outlet believing it would improve reception.
I don’t get a lot of encouragement from my wife on the home repair front. In the past few weeks, she has called handymen to come to our condo to loosen a stuck door, attach a gate on the deck to keep our dog from running away and dig a hole in the yard so another handyman could come and sink a post in the hole and a third handyman could come and attach a birdhouse to the top of the post. I’m sure I could have dug that hole myself, if I had the time. And a shovel.
What satisfaction I gained by successfully repairing our doorbell was mitigated by the fact that she was on the phone with our insurance agent verifying our fire coverage while I was replacing an electrical part.
Maybe there’s still time for me to learn how to fix things, but it’s not likely because I’ve been an unhandyman my entire life.
In 10th grade, I took the mandatory shop class at school, which involved making a garden trowel and a lamp in order to get a passing grade. At the end of the semester, I brought them home.
“Look what I made,” I said to my mom. “A garden trowel and a lamp.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Which one’s the lamp?”
Contact D.L. Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com
About the Author
