By Todd Lancaster
March 21, 2008 11:00 pm
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As the weather begins to turn nice, the battle between what needs to done around the old homestead and what I actually can do begins.
There are plenty of things that need to be done around my house, and quite frankly, I’m not very good at any of them. I can cut the lawn and swing a paint brush (to a degree), but outside of that, I’m pretty worthless.
Men all across the world are tilling gardens, building decks and replacing windows, while I, on the other hand, will not be doing any of that — and my wife and children don’t mind one bit. I’m a master with a little charcoal, and I’m not afraid to pick up after myself and my roommates (the wife and children), but when it comes time to make something that is not working work, then one is better off letting my spastic fingers walk through the Yellow Pages instead of near a band saw (at least if I want to continue to have seven and a half of them).
Why? Am I lazy? No, just stupid and not too proud to admit it. I guess a better phrase would be “mechanically challenged.”
I have no idea how anything works, and I’m OK with that. It helps me keep a little mystery in my world.
Can I fix the car? No. Fixing the car would require opening the hood. If one were to open the hood, the magic squirrels who make the wheels turn might run away and never come back.
I’m not much better with power tools. I had a drill that had a special attachment that will drill holes up to 3 inches in diameter. I never needed a 3-inch hole drilled, but I enjoyed drilling these doughnut-sized holes so much that my workbench and much of the basement drywall looked like Swiss cheese.
When I was in the Navy, I was taught by the Old Salts that if you had a particularly unpleasant job to do, and it required an expensive specialized tool, then the first step was to throw that tool overboard. If you thought $200 ashtrays and $400 toilet seats were expensive, you don’t even want to guess how many $900 hammers are littering the bottom of the Atlantic. I’m amazed F-14s don’t just fall out of the sky every day with people like me working on them.
When I was about 12 years old, my uncle asked me if I wanted to drive his old lawn tractor. It sounded fun, and the fact that I had never driven anything in my life didn’t stop me from jumping on and taking it for a spin. I never knew a built-in swimming pool could sneak up on a lawn tractor so fast.
Later during my adolescence, my mother asked me to trim the hedges with a brand-new Black and Decker hedge clipper. Always having an artistic flair, I saw something just a little different than hedges and bushes. I saw animals and dinosaurs. Although I was no Edward Sissorhands, I was well on my way to a second fern giraffe when the ambulance arrived to take my mother away.
I suppose that had I come from a handy family, I probably would be a better husband. But to the best of my knowledge, it was not the man’s job to do all the repairs, it was his secretary’s job.
After all, if there was a plumbing problem or the air conditioner went out, my Dad just told his secretary, and magically it would be fixed when I came home from school.
With as much trouble as I have been, I think I am the lesser of two evils. After all, if I liked to do that kind of work, we would have to pay twice — once for my initial attempt and once to have a professional repair it later.
And just for the record, it is more than just a suggestion that one turn off the power before cutting ANY wires.
tlancaster@washtimesherald.com
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