I’m not cheap. That’s not the reason I tinker and come up with odd solutions to obvious problems. I’m not lazy, either. Most of the time it takes far longer to do it my way than the way anyone else would — throw it out and start over. And it’s not like I’m trying to save room in the landfill.
Yet, there I was, cramming myself under the passenger seat of my Jeep, replacing a spring that broke, which causes it to slide forward and back like an amusement park ride. I had created a wire contraption that would hold it in place … hopefully. Why not just get a new spring? I don’t know!
And there I was calling my brother to ask if the welder was working.
“Whyyyyy?” he asked in his goofy, defensive sing-song, not wanting to commit to an answer until he knew it wouldn’t suck him into a bottomless pit of work.
My lawnmower, which runs great, despite the fact that I haven’t changed or added oil since I bought it in 1997, has some rust eating through the body. It’s unfortunately just above one of the wheels, which means it is tilting sideways to the point that the blade is cutting grass so unevenly that people get dizzy looking at my yard.
“I want to weld a piece of metal to my mower to shore up the wheel,” I told him.
It sounded ridiculous, I know, and I wondered what was going through his mind as he said, “Ohhh-kayyyy.” Did he think I had finally lost it and was trying to turn my mower into some kind of Mad Max lawn trimmer?
But I do these kind of imaginary-solution-things all the time. The pin on the pop-up garbage can in our kitchen snapped, so I replaced it with a nail. Works fine now. I tinker. I come up with long, roundabout ways to fix things like a home-economics MacGyver, using my skills to bring stuff back to life.
Could be it bothers me that we’ve become a disposable society and nothing is meant to last. Everything is made to break and be bought anew, like a modern-day phoenix. It dies so you can go to the mall and make it rise again.
Could be there’s some DNA in all men that make us Mr. Fixits — some primordial urge to take apart the lawnmower, even though we can barely put together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
After putting aside the mower problem to give it more thought, I dragged a broken bird bath to my brother’s shop to try and fix it. I was going to drill holes into the base, slide in a steel rod and fill it with concrete epoxy.
My brother stared in amazement as I carried it into the yard.
“How’d you break that?” he wondered out loud, staring at the decapitated base.
“I think an overweight bird tried to take a swim,” I said.
He did some more staring. “You know, bird baths are incredibly cheap. You could just buy a new one.”
But he missed the point. Not only had this been a gift to my wife, and one that I had promised to fix for months, but there was also the fact that it COULD be fixed. And that said, why not do it?
And where did he get off criticizing me? He’s no better. Inside his shop, you dodge three motorcycles that are constantly being broken down and reassembled. And I won’t be humbled by a guy whose dog kicks over your beer and drinks it.
It CAN be fixed, so why not fix it? We drilled. I epoxied and then carted the bird bath home. My wife smiled.
“You finally did it!” she cooed.
I had tinkered my way into her heart. Now I just hope that overweight bird doesn’t try swimming again. Not sure how much weight the tinkered-with bird bath can take.