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I have done a
significant number of home repair
projects over the years.
Take my word for it, that statement is
hilarious.
Nancy, who usually wisely trusts me
with nothing sharper than round-nosed
scissors, sees nothing alarming about
outfitting me with a table saw and
nail gun to go down and put
toe-molding in the basement. Nancy’s
mistake is she trusts me. Mine is I
trust myself.
For example, there is the time I
re-plumbed the basement bathroom to
repair a leaky shower. Phase one of my
operations was busting the tile wall
with a sledgehammer. This part went
admirably. When it comes to
sledgehammers, I have no peer. Once
the tile was knocked away, I had
merely to hacksaw off the leaky
fixture and replace it. A few minutes
into the sawing I discovered it would
have been prudent to shut off the
water first, but otherwise everything
was smooth sailing.
Next came soldering the new fixture.
Then began, as Shakespeare puts it,
the tempest to my soul. Two-by-four
studs ran up the wall behind the wall.
These blocked my propane torch from
getting behind the pipes, making
soldering problematic if not
impossible. Moreover, as I knew from
my childhood days, wood belongs in the
Class of Things That Burn, along with
paper, hair, matches, and toy
soldiers. A nightmare vision floated
before my eyes of flames hungrily
licking up between the studs as I
frantically knocked holes in the sheet
rock, applying a garden hose to the
fire behind the walls.
At the hardware store, in the
Are-You-Really-Dumb-Enough-to-Try-This
aisle, I found an epoxy specially
blended to seal copper pipes.
“Waterproof,” it said.
“Guaranteed not to leak,” it said.
If you can’t see where this is
heading, get your eyes checked at
once.
Following the tube’s directions, I
slathered a generous amount on all
fittings, allowed it to dry twice the
recommended time, and turned the water
back on.
Nary a leak.
It wasn’t until the next day that
the glue gave way. Nancy was in the
upstairs bathroom when she heard two
metallic-sounding pops in the bathroom
below her followed by twin geysers
rushing heavenward. It’s a good job,
she says, that she was already sitting
down, or on top of everything else,
she’d have had to do an extra load
of laundry.
As soon as she was able, Nancy ran
downstairs and shut off the main
valve. When the plumber arrived and
beheld the ankle-deep water, the
busted shower tile, the shower fixture
looking like a metal heart with two
major arteries detached, their ends
gummy with useless glue, his only
reaction was an almost reverential,
“What do you want me to do?”
Nancy stifled her immediate response
– “Help me murder my husband and
dispose of the body” – and humbly
asked him to start from scratch and
repair the damage.
Now in spite of previous experiences,
Nancy and I are about to polyurethane
the living room floor. Simplicity
itself, you say, but I would like you
to visualize a large can of glutinous
polyurethane, shimmering like a deadly
translucent pearl, just waiting to
upend and saturate an expensive divan
or tumble down the stairs, cascading
out in a beautiful, slow-motion
waterfall. Now imagine trusting this
bucket of lovely honey-colored
calamity in my hands – a man
incapable of drinking a cup of coffee
without getting it on his shirt, a man
who has stupefied onlookers by eating
ordinary Chinese take-out and winding
up looking as if he’d been rolled
around in sweet-and-sour sauce.
What, Nancy asks, could possibly go
wrong?
What, indeed?
Copyright Man Martin
* * * * * * * * * *
Man Martin's first
novel, "Days of the Endless
Corvette," won him Georgia Author
of the Year Award in 2008. His second
novel, "Paradise Dogs", is
due out this June from Thomas Dunne
Books. Visit him at http://manmartin.blogspot.com
or http://manmartin.net
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