Hunting at the hardware store
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- July 25, 2023
- 422
Buying a house is an excellent excuse to visit your local hardware store. These emporiums of home repair and fix-up necessities are to men what clothing stores are to women.
Hardware store personnel speak house upkeep and improvement fluently, and they are very adept at deciphering sign language. One can ask for a thingamajig, about so wide to fix your whatsit, with assurance you will be understood. This works best when the person needing the thingamajig is the person who goes to get it. Once Taller Half sent me to get a washer for a washerless faucet. That seemed odd to me then and still does. One would seem to cancel out the other, but such is not the case. Taller Half had chosen to have the more expensive washerless faucet installed, which, I was assured, could be cheaper in the long run. However, in the short run, that faucet leaked, and a washer was then needed to fix it.
Off I was sent to get a washer ... for a washerless faucet. The clerk was kind and understanding and located a washer he thought would do the trick. It didn’t. Back I went to exchange one size washer for another size. That time the size was right, but the shape was wrong. At that point I rebelled and refused to harass that clerk a third time. I told Taller Half to “go get your own washer.” That was a mistake.
Something happens to men when they enter a hardware store. It’s like they step into a time warp. Some have been known to disappear for hours and days and others to never return. Taller Half was lucky. He managed to pull himself away after only two hours.
I have learned to volunteer to go to the hardware store when Taller Half needs something. It’s a matter of being older and wiser. I’m wiser, and Taller Half is too old to chance spending his remaining years roaming around a hardware store.