Getting in a bind over a fix
Getting in a bind over a fix
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday December 22, 2012
Section: Opinion
I am not the person you call on to get something fixed. Unless it’s a missing button, a sandwich or a broken heart. Year 8 home economics and the empathy gene have served me well, but not well enough to be trusted with important things like dishwashers that don’t, taps that drip like nightly water torture and new digital tellies that refuse to play ball when the tennis starts.
Every household needs someone who has patience, logic and the ability to read an instruction manual. Apparently I have none of these skills. Actually, I know I have none of these skills because I switch off the minute the man of the house starts lecturing me about why domestic life might be easier if I kept my cool, attempted some rational thought and located the darn instruction manual.
I’ve already learnt one of the most important lessons for marital harmony: decide which one of you is going to play the helpless role, and which of you is going to pretend they know what they’re doing. I don’t like to tread on my husband’s area of expertise – self delusion – because he prides himself on his masterful tool-work.
Our garage, depending on your point of view, is either an obsessive-compulsive’s shrine to hoarding or a spider-pit of uselessness. Countless bits of sawn-off skirting boards have been stacked on the rafters, all manner of timber off-cuts festoon the walls, some rusted gardening tools first used to topiary the gardens of Versailles are propped behind the door and a there’s a kayak whose bottom has been wet just the once. (By the sprinkler.) Trying to coax a hoarder into sending scraps of wood to the tip is like asking a kid to give up Christmas. I get a staunch refusal backed up by some pithy remark: “If I ever got some time to myself on a weekend I’d be oar in hand down the river right now.” Little does he know that over the years, I’ve portered trunkfuls of his prized junk across town to friends’ verges, awaiting their council ‘bring out your dead.’
When my jack-of-all-trades is fed up with his squabbling progeny interrupting the cricket on weekends, he grabs his car keys and calls to me over his shoulder: “I’m just popping down to Bunnings, do you need anything?” I like to yell back: ‘I’d like a new set of knockers please, wooden ones if they have them, they feel nice.” “Oh, and an all purpose spreader.” In case he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, I add: “And some lawn fertilizer to put in it.” Then I sit back and make a cup of tea knowing he’ll be gone for hours because Bunnings is his Aladdin’s cave.
I’m sure the place is also a cult. Customers in Bunnings look disconcertingly happy – like they’re high on the sheer spectacle of a million bits-and-bobs with easy reach. (Of a fork-lift.) I notice there’s a lot of waiting around at the paint counter, but everybody is calm – people making small talk with each other while they finger the silky new paintbrushes. I see their eyes glaze over as they fantasise about new colour swatches and virgin rollers and trays, all fluffy soft and inviting. No-one does their lolly there, even when it takes fifteen minutes to locate the plumbing expert and the queue at the cash register is a dozen deep.
My right-hand man uses trips to Bunnings as a rite of passage for our five year old. Together, man and boy drive off in the ute and vanish for half the afternoon, signalling their return with a flurry of excited shouts “Hey, I got a really big tool box, some new drill bits, a hot dog and a piece of special wood.” And then I turn to my small son and say “And what did you get darling?”
I know there might be just as many women as men who love fixing things. But I doubt it. Though I do have several girlfriends who have been forced into the role of household trouble-shooter by necessity. Like me, there are men out there who won’t read instruction manuals – believe it or not. They’re usually the ones who have ‘tool tempers’ that erupt while hanging (their wives’) paintings – where the air turns blue from their constant stream of invective and the hallway is littered with hooks and screws thrown down from the ladder in disgust. Those kind of tinkerers need to accept their limitations, hand the drill and plugs to the missus and dish out instructions instead.
To me, a washing machine is as complex as a space shuttle, so when I’m left alone in a house with a malfunctioning appliance, I feel uncomfortable. Last month our toilet threatened to block because our two-year-old thinks ‘toilet training’ is teaching the bog to swallow an entire roll of poo-tickets. Having fished reams of sodden paper out of the bowl, my bloke fiddled around with the flush mechanism and pronounced it ‘fixed.’
As he left the house for work the next morning, I was given strict instructions to gently press the button until the water subsided. Gentle pressing I did, but when the water started rising – fast – I did what any level-headed woman would do and started frantically bashing the button. It worked a treat. Until the button stopped being a button and got stuck in the hole. I thought I might sort it out if I lifted the cistern lid off and had a play around but some valve popped out of alignment and then I couldn’t get the lid back on. Knowing I was faced with certain disgrace, I rang three plumbers before one agreed to call by, fixed it in 30 seconds and charged me $90 for the pleasure. Frankly, it was a small price to pay for saving my bacon.
Domestic life is not just divided into do-it-yourself-ers and incompetents. It’s about who kills the cockroaches, especially the summer ones that rocket into the house with their Boeing wingspans. It’s about which half of a partnership likes spiders enough to slide them out the back door on a piece of newspaper without histrionics. And it’s which person wakes up fast enough to make a flying leap from bed when there are scary noises in the middle of the night. It’s never a burglar, always middle son falling out of bed. His father usually gets the trailing foot tangled up in the sheet and traumatises all three children with howls of shock and pain as he crashes to the floor.
Misbehaving computers, however, are a burden to be shared equally. When they go on the blink, or blank, I yell for my 46-year-old technology wizard, who tells me (much too gleefully): “Isn’t it time you learnt to fix it yourself?”
“Help!” I then plead to eldest son, who calls back: ‘You’re such a noob Mum, you can’t even find your own Word document – Epic Fail.’ I tell him to lower his voice so my cover’s not blown – really, I have no idea how to retrieve any documents from the Microsoft cloud, but hey – I don’t need that telegraphed.
I don’t believe anyone should be facetious about maintenance matters. When the dishwasher improves to washing 80-percent of the dishes and sodden husband finally emerges from inside it, I hand him a glass of wine to reward his genius and remark: “Thanks honey, you’re quite a catch.” (Dishwashers are not all he can get going.)
Last law of marital harmony: appreciate the effort, not the result. (Then get a professional in first thing Monday.)