Larry the Tool Man I Ain’t

There was a time when I felt that to be a “real man” I had to know how to fix things. You know, handyman stuff around the house. Never mind that I had absolutely zero aptitude for it. But that didn’t stop me from trying.

Tammy, our small daughters and I lived in a modest tract home in San Jose, California when a golden opportunity came up one Saturday morning for me to show off my prowess with tools. The kitchen sink had backed up. I took a look under the sink, made a great show of examining the problem and uttered the fateful words: “How hard could it be?”

I ran to the garage and shuffled through the only three tools I owned: a 30-year old wrench, a rusty screwdriver and a claw hammer. I often used them interchangeably but today I knew what to do. It was the wrench!

With Tammy looking on skeptically, I crawled under the sink and started to loosen the pipe. The ancient wrench was so flimsy that it kept slipping, causing me to skin my knuckles. I have what is probably the lowest tolerance for pain in the human race so even the slightest of bruises get me whining. I finally got the pipe loose but it fell down into my face along with the last three days-worth of gunk. Normally in such a situation, my hair- trigger temper would have automatically released a long string of, well, let’s call them “salty” words. But this was a special occasion. It demanded an extra special response.

During the few extra nanoseconds it took me to think up the perfect and prolonged eruption, Tammy grabbed the girls and ran out the door. They had barely cleared the house when the shock wave hit. Some said it rattled windows and road signs two blocks away. Once the smoke cleared, she carefully brought the girls back into the house, got into the car, drove to the hardware store and bought the right tools.

She fixed the sink.

At the time, I was devastated. My manhood was in a shambles. But it did have one lasting positive result: Tammy hasn’t given me a honey-do list since then. In fact, the only thing I got was a “honey-don’t” list. You’d have thought it would be as thick as one of those old paper phone books. Not so. In fact it was only three words: Don’t! Touch! Anything!

For the most part, I followed my wife’s marching orders. Other than a few more unfortunate dust-ups that I got into with the clothes drier, the toilet’s O-ring and the car’s oil pan, I pretty much stayed out of her way.

Thankfully, my definition of what constituted machismo evolved beyond what I could do – or couldn’t do – with a set of tools. To my delight, I discovered that I could do other things pretty well and hire people to do the stuff I couldn’t. After all, plumbers have to make a living, too.

I eventually figured out that I didn’t need to be like anybody else to add my own unique value to the world. How boring would it be if we were all alike?  I suppose it starts with knowing ourselves better, understanding who we really are – warts and all. In fact, we probably learn more from our warts than anything else, if we’d have the guts to admit they’re there. It would make us more humble; give us more empathy. Maybe we’d be more tolerant of others’ differences and weaknesses. Tonic for a troubled world.

But if you think you’ve got this whole thing figured out and don’t need to change, I’d be happy to loan you my wrench.

Note: If you’d like to read more of my humor, feel free to check out my “More Stuff” page where I’ve provided links to several of my humor articles that were published in the Deseret News, Utah’s largest daily newspaper. You can also click on the “Humor” box below and all of my humor posts on this website will come up.