Since I'm Not Mr. Fix-It Cussing Seems to Help Some

I am not Mr. Fix-It. Sam and Kathleen can attest to that. Not to say I can’t fix things, I just don’t come by the talent naturally. I missed receiving the fix-it gene when I was born (I probably had gotten in the line for cookies). Too often when I try to fix something or put something together I wind up cussing way more than either my wife or my dog likes to hear – especially my wife.

I have a lot of smarts – no really – and I almost always manage to complete a task no matter how long it takes. And cussing and ranting almost always makes me feel better later. You know, after the near heart attack. I just don’t understand why fixing things has to be so darned difficult.

My poor brother Pete must take after me because he announced on Facebook recently that it took him six hours to make a simple repair in his bathroom and on top of a long and frustrating day he managed to flood the loo – uh – too.

I sometimes think I should have taken mechanics and wood shop in high school instead of all those college prep courses. Maybe I would have learned something useful. But in spite of my handicap, I have actually managed to fix, build and repair things. I once built a house, subbing out the framing, electricity and plumbing, but installing the windows, the roof and flooring myself. I’ve also fixed cars, once replacing a muffler on an old Volkswagen for a friend. One of the worst car repair jobs I ever had to do was replace a water pump on a 1968 Rambler I owned for a couple of years. Rambler changed the water pump part for that car three times. I rode my bicycle two miles into town to the auto parts store and back home in 80+degree heat three times before I got that car fixed. But I fixed it!

Another car fix-it story comes to mind when my dad and I tried to repair a clutch or throw-out bearing on the family car. Once we had that part in we attempted – for several hours – to put the transmission back in place. No dice! Several hours later, laying under that danged car, sweating gallons of bodily fluids, skinning every knuckle on our hands, nearly crushed to death by the weight of that transmission, and swearing like a couple of berserk pirates, we had to give it up. Lo and behold, the next day after we reluctantly crawled back under that car again, we were able to shove that tranny home like it was on greased skids. That taught me that sometimes it pays to just walk away from something a while and when I come back to it later it usually works.

I wish, however, that I were better at walking away from my computer when something doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. Computer glitches seem to occur in direct opposition to the amount of work I am anxious to accomplish. Today, for instance, I wanted to write this blog and for some reason I ran afoul of Hewlett Packard attempting to remotely set up my printer – which was already set up. Well, I hit a wrong response button and spent the next half hour fuming in unprintable language for HP to hurry-the-you-know-what up! I was almost ready to ask the new neighbor kid across the street to come over because he’s eleven and probably could have got me going again, but HP finally relented and let me have my computer back. I hope it got its “reporting” all done and will now leave me the heck along.

Remember the old DOS system on early computers. I used to cuss the computer I worked on for newspaper reporting something fierce. But when I typed something like, “Up yours you stupid computer” it would just respond “Don’t understand the command” or “Invalid input,” something like that. Okay. I’m thinking of a cuss word now between damn and that infamous “f” word. Can you guess what it is? Sorry, don’t mean to offend.