I can laugh at myself. Bare minimum.
My anecdotes help me find the humor flavor in life. They
may be inconsequential, but their narrative helps me find me as a person.
So I talk. Even if no one listens.
Self-help and all…
Our dinner table was overturned in my husband’s overwrought emotional (redundant?) condition. He was alone in the room at the time and very frustrated with a minute detail external to anything relevant to his current life.
So over the table went; one futile attempt at unleashing internal demons.
The result: one broken table leg. A dinner table can only withstand so much.
Something has to give. I feel fortunate it was only one leg.
So home repairs have been underway.
Somewhat.
For two people who only know how to break things, we are not the best candidates to make anything whole again.
But varsity effort, we try. In vain. Like idiots. To do the mundane things for which we have no skill set. We are creative people, after all.
So with a broken wrist, I attempt to assist in overturning the great table for repair, resulting in more bruises on my horrific forearms (long sleeves for me all summer). Just try carefully overturning one end of a heavy table with one feeble arm = disaster.
But the table is indeed up-ended. And broken.
Lovely.
Many hours have been spent attempting to fix. But, again, who are we to embark on such an industrious course?
Alas, alone today I venture out for perhaps the right drill bit to give us new holes to secure our fractured table. Super glue has already been purchased (I feel queasy already).
Knowing nothing, I the brave-hearted venture to the hardware store to discover how one might reattach a disassembled, reluctant leg.
Like a hun, I bring the freaking table leg with me, laden over my shoulder of the good arm (no broken wrist). Literal me, I figure it is best to bring the offensive leg with me so the experts can reckon.
Like a weakling, I can only carry it by laying it across my shoulder.
I feel like such a moron.
I hate home projects.
I really don’t even understand them.
But brave soul that I am, I carry the dead wood into the hardware store and muddle my way to drill bits and stand there, sullenly.
Good thing I looked pathetic, lest the staff would have never noticed me.
I at least knew what I needed.
But I never could have chosen.
The hole, the options, the hardware. Such stress.
I just would like a leg reattached, if possible.
And a brilliant employee addressed me, sought my concern, and went straight to the screws.
The trick, so I have learned, is in finding the right screw (go figure!) which tells the size needed.
Now I know.
I hope it works.
I have yet to try it.
But I am amazed at problem solving that, honestly, never would have occurred to me.
Experts reign in their own arenas. I am happy to give them that, for novice I would have floundered for days.
I do not need to know all. I need to know that others know whatever it is they know.
I am humbled.
And thankful.
- Mary O. Fumento, 2008
