I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not very handy — not when it comes to fixing things, anyway. In some situations I can be awfully handy to have around, like if you need to know an obscure bit of pop culture arcana that no one should reasonably remember. This is precisely why every few weeks my friend Bradly calls from Pittsburgh to ask me questions like:
» Who was that weird character on “Mork & Mindy” with the flowing robe and the imaginary friends?
» In “Fletch,” what made- up name did Chevy Chase use when he introduced himself to Tim Matheson’s wife?
» What was the name of that terrible sitcom with the little girl who talked like a robot?
Sadly, this talent does me little good when, say, the garbage disposal stops working. It’s not like I can open the cabinet beneath the sink and say, “Hey, did you know that the actor who played ‘The Jeffersons’ neighbor, Mr. Bentley, was also the guy on ‘Sesame Street’ who painted numbers on everything?” and have the disposal start again, good as new. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Instead, much to my wife’s chagrin, I tend to ignore most household repair issues that arise. Take, for example, our back door latch that has been sticking lately. Whenever the door won’t open at all, I always take immediatesteps — over to the side door. Were the side door also to break, I would just switch to using the front door. This is my idea of problem solving. Eventually, I would probably wind up climbing out an attic window and rappelling down the side of the house whenever I needed to leave.
Admittedly, most men do not think this way. Take my high school friend Doug, for example. During a recent visit, he noticed our door problem and, without asking permission, located some tools I keep around — purely for decoration, mind you — then took the door off its hinges and fixed the latch.
To me, this impulse is completely alien. While staying with friends I would no more presume to fix a broken door than I would to take out my Swiss Army knife and begin performing amateur dentistry on their pets.
I suspect my lack of fixit skills stems from growing up in a single-parent household where our primary home repair tool was the telephone. Every time the dishwasher overflowed, for example, my mom would snap into action by calling … the fire department. I guess her thinking was, “Who knows more about water spraying everywhere than the guys with the fire hoses?” Thankfully, I never got to test my theory that in the event of an actual fire, she would have called Kenmore’s 800 number.
The fire department couldn’t manage all our household repair needs, however. When considering a prospective handyman, Mom always chose on the basis of experience, credentials and references — having any of these qualifications meant you probably charged too much. Thanks to this lowball approach to home improvement, all the broken windows and leaky faucets of my childhood were fixed by desperate-looking characters Mom appeared to have selected from among the contestants in a Charles Manson look-alike contest.
I now realize that if I hadn’t been put off by the stench of cheap liquor and the incoherent mumbling, these drifters might have taught me some valuable household repair skills, as well as how to use a sharpened spoon to fashion a tattoo in prison.
But instead I barricaded myself in my room to watch TV, leaving me with few practical skills, but a wealth of useless trivia. Which reminds me: Bradly, the answers are Exidor, John Cocktoasten and “Small Wonder.”
Examiner columnist Malcolm Fleschner sincerely apologizes to any handymen, fans of cheap liquor or Charles Manson look-alikes this column may have offended.
