Sunday, January 08, 2012

Extreme Makeover, Home Edition

Well, I went ahead and did the toilet seat today after home improvement Saturday and it was handily the easiest job of all of them. So, while I was doing it, I gave a little thought as to why these home repair kinds of things are so difficult for me.

My father and I are very different men. My father was always an outdoors, physical exertion kind of guy. And I was a bookish, artsy, indoors kind of kid. And so he and I didn't relate. He couldn't understand how I could just not get how to ride a two wheeled bike, for instance.

So since we were so obviously different and antagonistically so, I didn't bother to learn anything associated with his macho manliness.  And that, unfortunately, included home improvement skills I would later need to have in dealing with every day life as a man.

I was always so afraid of doing these kinds of things wrong that I would just as soon not do them at all.  Consequently, while I knew how to cook and to darn when I moved out, I wasn't even aware that I had to change furnace filters periodically, never mind how.

So I have had to learn as an adult and I usually look like a goof doing it.  But I for the most part I muddle through.  As to why my dad made things difficult, I am almost certain it was him being either an alcoholic or an ACoA (he was both).  But that was then and things are different now.  Thank goodness.



The original, by Jimmy Jones.

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