In honor of the new deck my talented husband is building, I bring you a SPIN CYCLE column from the archives, entitled:
"When home repairs are needed, it’s GoFer Girl to the rescue!"
When something goes wrong with our house – a leaky faucet, a broken appliance, a rodent invasion -- I know I’m in trouble. The room begins to spin. Gone are my weekend dreams of napping, reading and sewing. I try to adjust the horizontal. I try to adjust the vertical. Alas, it is too late. I’ve been sucked into The Home Improvement Zone.
Some men prefer to have their wives call a repairman, thus resolving home repair issues with a wave of the credit card. For my husband, Jeff, this would be the ultimate insult.
At the slightest hint of household trouble, Jeff steps into a phone booth, whirls around, and is magically transformed into Do-It-Yourself Man. He’s quite a handsome spectacle with his tool belt tugging his pants down and his Home-Depot-orange cape fluttering in the breeze.
Naturally, Do-It-Yourself Man cannot work alone. He requires his trusty sidekick, GoFer Girl. Without so much as a costume change, I fetch screwdrivers, socket wrenches, sandwiches and beer. I shlep two-by-fours, shop-vacs and sledgehammers. I cheerfully fulfill my GoFer Girl duty until the moment I dread arrives.
“I need sixteen more of these,” Jeff says, holding up a mysterious metal object that I can only describe as a “thingamajig.” I hold my breath, waiting for the other work boot to drop. “I got them at 84 Lumber.”
Now don’t get me wrong, 84 Lumber is a fine establishment, but it is clearly no-woman’s land. Unlike a bustling home-improvement center, there are no perky employees to coach you, no helpful signs to guide you, no sponge painting seminars to inspire you. Instead, there’s a somewhat grumpy-looking guy named Joe. In fact, they’re all named Joe. Always.
I arrive at my destination, approach the counter and announce, in my most confident Gofer Girl voice, that I need sixteen more of these. A slight smile plays across Joe’s lips, and I can tell he lives for these moments.
“Well, what you have here is your basic hydraulic hydro-magnetic quasi-nuclear variable-speed widget agitator,” Joe utters. Although he does not call me “little lady,” I can see it in his eyes.
Joe pauses to scratch himself thoughtfully, and I know the moment of truth has arrived. “Do you need this in high density polycarbide or with a multi-density gold-plated steel shaft?” Naturally, I do not know, so like E.T., I must phone home.
Several phone calls later, I’m headed home with the proper widget agitators in hand. That’s one trip to the hardware store down, another nine or ten to go, and Do-It-Yourself Man’s project will be completed. And to think, he does it all by himself.
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