Articles

	Confessions of an Un-Handyman Published in Cleveland's Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine The women's movement hasn't been of much help to me. Oh, I understand the movement is designed primarily to improve the lot of women, but I've been hoping all that consciousness-raising would benefit me by erasing one particular sexual stereotype — the one that says men are supposed to be handy. Women really go for men who can wrench wayward spoons out of the garbage disposal and not flood the kitchen, change license plates without a blowtorch, and install picture hooks without a paramedic standing by. Men like this are considered handy. I'm not very handy. Most days operating my electric pencil sharpener and handling the self-serve pump without spilling unleaded gas on my trousers are about all the feats of mechanical aptitude I can muster. I'm not sure exactly when my aversion to anything with moving parts began, but I do remember never learning to roller skate because I couldn't get the hang of adjusting my skates with that little key. It wasn't until years later that I noted how simple the adjustment was if you took the key off the string around your neck...and how much easier it was to avoid choking. In those innocent times before electronic games and 10-speed bikes, there was not a great premium on being handy. The klutzy kid could get by...except for an occasional birdhouse-building contest. Imagine my dread when it was announced that all 1,000 boys and girls in my elementary school were invited to enter a competition to see who could create the finest sanctuary for our little feathered friends. I immediately pictured the day of the contest: the sidewalks swarming with hundreds of proud young children toting bird bungalows, ranch houses, and even those monstrous hotel-looking structures with lots of holes and perches and little signs that tell the birds the check-out time and whether seed is available on the American plan. Desperate, I nagged my dad to help me build a birdhouse. Finally, with the deadline upon us, we combed the workbench to see if there were some scraps that would prevent me from being the only kid to go to school empty-handed. "Dad, can I pound in that nail?" "Well, you might split the wood." "Dad, can I paint that side?" "I don't want any paint to drip on last Sunday's newspaper." "Dad, can I stay in the basement while you finish my birdhouse?" The next day there were no kids pulling wagons laden with birdhouses. No children were seen balancing birdhouses among their books. In the entire school, four children — or rather three children and one adult — entered the competition. My dad came in third. In seventh grade I lost my cover. In seventh grade every boy took wood shop. Fathers were not allowed to take the course with their sons. The first project was terrifying. Among the 11 steps, each of which had to be approved by the teacher, was planing — planing the face of a small board until it was exquisitely smooth and straight. I don't know if you ever have wielded a wood plane. I don't know if you ever had to withstand the scrutiny of a shop teacher with microscopes for eyes. I don't know if you have ever watched tiny wood shavings pile up around your ankles while all your 12-year-old peers are blithely sanding and drilling and varnishing. I don't know if you ever have had to spend a week's allowance to buy a new board because the one you have grown to despise over the past six weeks has been shaved so thin it could be karated in two by your little sister. If you never have endured such humiliations, let me assure you that as a mood lifter, wood planing ranks right up there with passing kidney stones and declaring bankruptcy. I was worried I'd get an F in wood shop that first semester, but I didn't. I got an incomplete. By spring the other seventh-graders were far past their initial projects and focusing on Mother's Day. They were building their moms lamps, dressers, condominiums. I had just enough time to fashion a napkin holder. You can see it to this very day on a counter in my parents' home. It's an unlacquered, pathetic-looking thing that never really made the grade as a napkin holder and just stores coupons for decaffeinated coffee. Now, as a husband and father, my prowess has expanded a bit. Given a few weeks lead time, I can assemble simple toys with only two or three parts left over. I can put the leaf in our dining room table, operate the triple-track windows, and I've even spackled. Yet, I know there are women who privately say about me, "He's a nice guy, but he's not very handy."

  
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