Remember old old Rock ‘n roll song ? – where the exasperated dad finally had had enough of his son’s using the town’s roads as a raceway? – and the old, souped up Lincoln as a low – flying rocketship ?
The chorus went:
“My Dad said,” Son, you’re gonna drive me to drinkin’ –
– If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln !”
I think I have a feel for what that dad must have felt.
True, I don’t have a son of driving age (or any other age), but I think I’m begining to understand the chronic…“pique”.
You see, I’ve fallen victim to the dreaded “HP”, or Home Improvement Syndrome” .
This commonly happens when a man happens to see some guy on TV flawlessly performing some household repair, in five minutes flat; never accidentally punching a hole in the wall, or shorting out the entire west side of the house (the less said about that afternoon, the better!).
I think women must go through roughly the same thing upon watching (shudder) a Martha Stewart segment on TV. I think she’s pretty scary – in a kind of Stepford/Disney way.
At least they WARN you when Martha Stewart is about to come on (like it’s a good thing !). Men, on the other hand are probably nursing that first cup of coffee early Sunday morning, when flipping channels, and, what do we come upon?
We come upon Bob Vila or some other Bob Vila wanna -demonstrating how simple it is to install a programmable thermostat for the winter.
“Golly”, I remember thinking. “What a keen idea!” – For those of you still in the dark, here’s where things started to go downhill.
My old thermostat (installed when Eisenhauer was but a gleam in his daddy’s eye, I think) worked fine. Just fine, thank you.
It didn’t “do” much. It went on. It went off. If it got below 68 at 3AM, it went on.
This, however, offended my sense of order and rightness with the Universe.
It should go on just before we get up. Who cares if the guy breaking into my house at 3AM is warm? Let him wear a sweater !
Anyway, the text on the box said that I should be able to finish in a half hour. So, feeling very sophisticated, I figured, thirty minutes? No way! But 60 mins? Sure, I suppose – 90 mins, tops.
Here’s exactly where I went wrong.
What I should have calculated is how long it would take the repairman to come out to work on the furnace !
After much experimentation, calling the factory “help” line, and trips to the local “helpful” Hardware Cavern, (over two days!) we discovered that I have the furnace equivalent of a Beta VCR !
Our furnace is so old and esoteric, that I needed to find some veteran of the Spanish American War who happened to remember, between bouts of drooling, how the darn thing worked !
In doing so, I also discovered that my wiring was all frayed and “crackly” [this last assesment, being an esoteric technical term describing “bad wire”] .
So, after accidentally vacuuming up a necessary screw and ripping open the vacuum bag in search of it, I calculated that I’d spent about eight hours, and my buddy had spent four.
Are we idiots? Are we auditioning for the three Stooges Revival film next year?
Of course not! We fell victim to the dreaded Home improvement Syndrome. For women it would be known as the Stewart Syndrome. Remember the segment where she showed how to make gold leaf out of candy wrappers, and apply it with an common household iron? It looked gorgeous, didn’t it? And what did yours look like?
Is “crap” too strong a word ?
I don’t think so !
So maybe a newer version of that old song might go:
My wife said, “Z, I’m gonna hit you on the head with this baseball bat,
If you don’t quit messin’ with our thermostat!”
Please stop