Hitting the Deck, Occasionally
Power tools and I have what might be called a love/hate relationship. I hate using them, they love tormenting me. I have a similar problem with bowling balls, but I can’t say anything about that until the court settlement is final. Just suffice it to say that bowling, buttered popcorn, and a Shady Elms Acres Senior Living Center field trip will result in gore of proportions never imagined by any of the participants or their attorneys.
To get back to the tools, I am much better off wielding simple tools such as hammers, screwdrivers, and crowbars. Crowbars are the best, as there is nothing about a crowbar that says “precision engineering.” I don’t like precision. Precision doesn’t like me. That’s probably why my porch looks like a storm cellar door and the chicken house looks like…well, it’s pretty much indescribable. We had to turn it into a feed shed because the chickens were too scared to go inside.
The beauty of crowbars is that they are seldom used to build something. They are more likely to be utilized for taking things apart. I’m good at taking things apart, provided, of course, that you don’t plan on putting those things back together again. I’m pretty much a “no looking back” sort of taking-aparter.
This past week, I had to remove a partition from the feed shed. The partition was no longer needed and, fortunately, was not weight-bearing, so I pretty much had a field day. Well, ten minutes of a field day, anyway. I can’t say that it was much of a challenge. In fact, it was so easy that by the time I was done, it actually looked like it could have been put back together.
So I set it on fire. Hey, I have a reputation to uphold.
Alas, it wasn’t long before the ugly head of construction turned around and nodded to me, a glint in its oozing yellow eyes. The project in question was that of a new deck, totally framed out and waiting for me – the Anti-Vila, if you will – to complete the initial stage of the construction by installing the decking with deck screws. And a screw gun.
A screw gun that plugs in, as in a power screw gun. A power tool.
I am firmly in the camp that screw guns don’t kill people, idiots who can’t handle screw guns do. Fortunately, none of the screws I would be installing would be going in a horizontal direction, so no one knows how many countless human lives were saved. A pity the same can’t be said about the moles. That’s going to be fun to clean up.
Anyway, despite all my best efforts, it became obvious that my luck with power tools hadn’t changed a whit. I stripped so many screws all that was missing was a feather boa-clad Gypsy Rose Lee accompanying my ineptitude with a rousing chorus of “Let Me Entertain You.”
Praise fulsomely all deities, real or imagined, for the industrial-strength knee pads I used while crawling about the deck, as they saved much wear and tear on my aging, protesting joints. I couldn’t help but think how handy they would have been back in my bar-hopping days. Heck, if I had those, and pub-crawling was an Olympic sport, I would have been the Michael Phelps of my day. Or at least one of those power hot-dog eating guys.
Eventually, I was able to finish the deck, and it only took about four times as long as a regular person would have needed. That beats my old record of six. Who knows, if I keep this up, I may become proficient enough to someday build my own barn…or my coffin, for when they pull my body out of the wreckage of the barn I put up using power tools.
Use the crowbar in the feed shed. It’s easy to find. Just look for the building the chickens won’t enter.
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