I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This: And Other Things That Strike Me as Funny by Bob Newhart

Author:Bob Newhart [Newhart, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1401309151
Amazon: B001Q9E9KG
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2007-10-02T07:00:00+00:00

Marriage and fatherhood heighten the disillusion that we all think we are born handy. We confidently believe that we can fix things around the house, as if it’s part of the collective male brain that was further enhanced by eighth-grade shop class.

Well, it’s not, and being pigheaded about it can become expensive.

One Saturday morning over breakfast, Ginnie instructed me to call a carpenter because we needed to replace a swinging door leading from the garage out to the backyard area.

“I can do that,” I assured her.

“Do you know how to hang a door?” she asked.

“It’s a door,” I said, brushing her off. “What’s so hard about hanging a door?”

I was sure that I was equal to the task because I had once had a summer job in a woodworking plant. The company made faux-cedar chests. They would take a chest made of pine or another cheap wood and then wrap it in sheets of glue and press thin layers of cedar on the chest. It turned out, I was a superstar at this.

On my first day on the job, one of the foremen assigned me to the glue machine.

“Let’s take a standard order, which is ten twelve-inch pieces of glue,” he said. “I’m going to take this chalk and then I am going to mark twelve inches. I am going to roll out the glue until it reaches twelve inches, and then I am going to use this little razor on top to cut it.” He paused to allow all of this to sink in. “How many more pieces of glue would we need to fill this order?”

“Nine,” I said.

“Have you worked this machine before?”

I assured him that I hadn’t.

“All right,” he said. “Let me give you another one. This is eight inches. What are we going to do with the chalk?”

“Put a mark at eight inches.”

“Okay, the order calls for nine glue sheets. You’ve done the one. How many more are you going to do?”

“Eight.”

“You’ve worked this machine before, haven’t you?” he asked in amazement.

Notwithstanding my apprenticeship in the mock-cedar-chest business, it turns out that hanging a door is one of the most difficult things you can do.

I drove to the hardware store to buy the supplies. I began to feel a tad intimidated just waiting to be helped. Standing in line with me were professional workmen. You can spot these guys instantly because their hands are covered in bandages from cutting themselves up, and their arms are scraped from falling off a roof or two. When it was my turn, I asked the salesman for a door.

“You want a hollow door or a solid door?” he asked.

“Uh … solid door,” I said, reasoning that it would be stronger.

By the way, you don’t want a solid door for a swinging door. A solid door weighs fifty pounds and a hollow door weighs five pounds, creating the need for two people to hold the door while a third person attaches the hinges.

The salesman scribbled on a piece of paper. “What are you going into?” he asked.

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