Wayback Machine: "If I had a hammer, I'd hammer my sleeve to the 2 X 4"

A Brecht's Beat throwback column

***Editor’s Note: Every once in awhile I like to dig back into the archives for a piece of old writing I enjoyed creating. This week’s is an oldie-but-goodie from my first newspaper job at the North Scott Press in 1995. For some reason, they gave me an opinion page column despite the fact I was all of 18 months out of college. This one is about my lack of mechanical skills and inability to do home improvement projects. I regret to inform not much has changed in the 30 intervening years.***

Now that I’m married, the one major genetic flaw I have been trying to hide is becoming glaringly obvious to everyone - I am utterly mechanically disabled. I need to consult an instruction manual to change a light bulb.

When you become a new homeowner, you see, little things go wrong all the time. Closet doors come off the track, blinds need to be hung, washers and dryers need to be installed, and I am at a complete loss.

I was able to hide this tragic incompetence through high school and college by hanging around with friends who knew what a four-barreled, double-cam, rotator cuff flange was used for, and how to operate it safely. They changed my tires and oil, fixed the garage door to my parents’ house when I drove my car into it, and generally bailed me out of any situation requiring hardware how-to skills.

But now, I am alone in my house with my wife, who looks over at me after the medicine cabinet crashes to the bathroom floor.

“Can you fix it” she asks.

And I’m forced to come up with a lame excuse about a journalist having to be on call 24-hours a day in case breaking news comes up in Plain View, and I really don’t have time for mundane problems like an exploding garbage disposal.

So we call her brother, who I believe was born with a silver drill bit in his mouth. The sad thing is, he has been at our home every weekend since we moved in nearly a month ago. He saws, drills and constructs low maintenance nuclear reactors while I eat nachos and watch football. Believe me, I’m not proud.

But it is not my fault. It is all in the chromosomes. My father is extremely dangerous with a tool in hand. Unlike me, however, he still believes he’s a handy man. And despite wrecked furniture and other household industrial accidents, he is still willing to tackle any project Bob Vila can dream up.

That is why my parent's sink dispenses hot water when the knob is turned right and cold when the knob is turned left. Many guests have received scalded esophagi after downing a quick glass of water at their house.

Then there is the upstairs bathroom, which needed new wallpaper and tile in the shower. According to the Time-Life series on home improvement, this project should take one to two weeks. My father spent the last half of the 1980s and the first three years of the 90s working on this one.

After several near-fatal caulking accidents and seven years of having no shower for me, the project was finally finished. My cousin was living with us at the time, and had the honor of being the first person to take a shower since leg warmers and blue eyeshadow went out of style.

My dad waited expectantly at the door, waiting for praise from a fellow family member.

“Uncle Gary,” my cousin stammered after drying off. “I hate to tell you this, but the soap dish is upside down.”

Luckily, it was only one short month later that problem was remedied.

Yet, mechanical ineptitude has often led my father to creative solutions to problems he created for himself. For instance, last week he shoved too many clothes down the upstairs laundry chute.

He ran two sets of stairs down to the basement and tried to dislodge them with a broomstick, which proved futile. Then, the faulty fixing gene kicked in.

Dad proceeded to the closet, took out a 16-pound bowling ball, ran back upstairs and threw it into the chute on top of the balled-up wad of dirty clothes. Success! The laundry shot out the bottom. Unfortunately, the diameter of the ball was greater than the mouth of the chute, leaving the ball stuck like a kidney stone halfway between the second floor and the basement.

No problem. Dad runs down the stair again, gets a length of rope, runs back upstairs and lowers it down the chute past the bowling ball.

Then (panting with exertion from climbing up and down stairs for the past 15 minutes) he runs back to the basement and ties a full paint can to the end of the rope.

Up the stairs again, to pull the can, the ball and several lost socks up the chute and into the upstairs hallway. Mission accomplished, dad has his pride intact and a pair of recovered socks.

Me? I’ll stick to watching football and eating nachos.

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