Miss Fix It

This is kind of a long story, and I may or may not switch from first to third person in the telling. Strongly leaning towards may. Turn back now if you wish.


It's not really a good idea to leave me alone for too long. One of two things typically happens. 1. I think too much. (After such occasions, one could likely find me weirded out by the possibility that Osama Bin Laden's goat may be harboring plots to overthrow our agricultural economy.) 2. I try to fix things. Believe it or not, it's the second of these options that proves more dangerous.

Yesterday, I came home from a leisurely lunch and went upstairs to switch a load of laundry over. The washer and dryer are the front-opening kind, and whoever set them up put them in backwards, meaning that the front loading doors open into eachother and one must maneuver around them to wrangle a load from the washer into the dryer. It has bothered me for months now, like the sort of low frequency hum that you quietly ignore until one day you tote a gun off to the local grocery store and shoot a checker for giving you plastic instead of paper. You know. That sort of thing.

So yesterday, having an afternoon to myself, I decided that I'd had it. A few days previous I'd been watching one of my home improvement shows, and the hapless host put an idea into my diseased little brain when he switched the hinges on a refrigerator door so it would open the opposite way. "Ahh!" Cyndi says to herself, "that didn't look too hard. I'll just take the doors off and switch the hinges. It will be easy. Probably it will only take a few minutes."

Twenty five minutes later, sweating and cursing (minimally of course, and only in my head), I had the dryer door off and found that even with all the might of my scrawny arm, I COULD NOT get the screw to go into the hole on the opposite side of the dryer opening. I begged, I pleaded, I threatened, I tossed around the word "scrapyard." But alas. No progress. (Switching into third person present tense mode in 3...2...1)

"That's it!" Cyndi shouts inanely. "I didn't want to do this, but you give me no choice. I'm going to go rent a drill!" Cyndi watches the dryer carefully for any sign of dogged submissiveness, but finding none, stomps downstairs to get her shoes and car keys. "You'll be sorry!" she shouts over her should as she clicks out of the front door.

(Fast forward 15 minutes.) Cyndi stands at the rental counter of the Home Depot. Buck the rental clerk blinks at the blond in shiny black heels and skirt standing in front of him.

"Hep you m'am?"

"Why yes. I need a drill," Cyndi says, trying to sound confident and knowing.

"Why?"

"Erm, why?" Cyndi stammers. The little voice in her head begins to yap at her, 'If you tell him what you need it for, he won't give it to you. You'll feel stupid. Be vague, be breezy, be confident.'

"Oh, just a couple little projects, you know." Cyndi laughs in what she hopes is a breezy manner.

Buck raises an eyebrow. "Like what?"

'You blew it,' says the little voice, 'you call that breezy? Psh.'

"Oh, this and that," Cyndi answers uncertainly.

"Well yer gonna have to give me some kind of idea of what yer doing else I can't give you the right tool."

"Oh, I just need to hang a few pictures, switch a door around, that sort of thing."

"Door? What kinda door?" Buck asks, preternaturally sharp now, formerly dull eyes taking on the glassy ferret-like sheen universal to used car salesmen.

"Washer and dryer." Cyndi mumbles.

"Washer and dryer! Waaaale. You caint use no drill fer that. You'll jest strip out the screws. Only it take ya 2 seconds instead of a minute. Trust me missy. I been usin these tools for 40 years now. You have to use a screwdriver."

"I tried that. The screw wouldn't go in."

Buck flicks a quick glance at Cyndi's arm, the problem already decided and quickly settling over his features in a mask of practiced skepticism. "Well you probably jest wasn't gettin enough power behind it. Or you have the wrong kind of screwdriver. What kind was you using?"

Frantically, Cyndi's mind swims. 'What is the name of that stupid thing?' she questions inwardly. The little voice in her head shrugs deferentially. 'Phillips' has miraculously vanished from the memory banks, and instead, "The one with the little crossy things at the top," is all that leaks out. Cyndi grimaces inwardly, feeling an utter moron.

"That's called a Phillips m'am. What size was it?"

"Uh, I dunno. Five or six inches long I guess."

Buck laughs his patented "Ain't it adorable when women try to fix things" chuckle. "No m'am. What size was the head?"

"Oh well, yes. Um. Not too big, about like this" Cyndi says, pinching her fingers and holding them up to her eye to indicate a quarter inch, simultaneously glancing around the shop for a tool to jam in her ear to end the mortification of the moment.

Buck sighs. "You come on back with me now and I'll show ya some thangs." He lumbers to a stock room behind the desk, Cyndi clicks after him, heels echoing mockingly in the industrial shed filled with steel and sawdust.

With a thick-fingered grease coated hand, Buck scrapes up a handful of screws.

"Now see, this here is a sheet metal screw," Buck says, poking at the flinty lot with a blunted black rimmed nail, "It's self-tapping, so ya don't hafta knock a hole in first. He counts out four screws and offers them. "You go head and put these in yer purse."

"Er, thanks."

"With the right screwdriver, these'll go right in fer ya. Guarantee it. Lemme show you what kind screwdriver you need." Buck clomps off into the store proper with Cyndi tagging along. He pauses by the screwdrivers and selects one from the bottom shelf.

"This one here is a good deal. It's got two sizes of flat and Phillips," he says, overemphasizing the word, doing his best to educate, "heads. And when ya take them out, it will double as a ratchet. You tell yer husband about that? Kay?"

"Sure. Thanks," Cyndi says, resisting the urge to kick him in the shin and claim a spasm.

"Now, that oughta do ya. Good luck." Buck ambles away back toward the rental section. Cyndi checks out and flies home with her new prize.

(Fast forward 20 minutes)

With considerably less sweating and cursing, Cyndi screws the last screw into the dryer door, now happily installed on the opposite side, opening away from the washer. "Hmm," she says happily, "I guess Buck did know what he was talking about."

She pushes the door closed triumphantly. It hits on something and flies back open. She tries again to the same result. "What the..." Cyndi opens the door and discovers she has installed it upside down.

"Oh for the love!" She shouts ineffectually, realizing that she has to switch the hinges to the other side of the door and reinstall. She opens the door and examines the hinges to find all the screw heads are stripped out and cannot be removed. "Some moron must used a drill on em," Buck comments from inside Cyndi's head.

The only option left is to take the door off and put it back in in its original backward position. Cyndi takes the door off again and re-installs it a third time, only this time the door requires and extra push in order to close.

So all that, and yours truly managed only to make to dryer door close less smoothly than it had in the past. Yeah. I rock. Grocery checkers beware.

-Cyndi