Keeping the contractors in business
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- December 2, 2024
- 277
Until he was cured of his do-it-yourself mania, Taller Half spent years convinced he could fix anything that needed fixing in our various houses.
For the most part, his confidence was well-placed, though his greatest talent was disassembling; that man could reduce anything to its smallest possible denominator. Putting something back together again was where he could run into trouble. As a result several repair jobs resulted in leftovers.
Leftovers are perplexing things. They’re the residue of repair jobs, parts and pieces with no known function. To give Taller Half his due, most of his repair projects were successful, even if they did sometimes end with extra pieces. All the same it was rather worrying. If, say, the deadbolt lock could function minus a few parts, why were they there in the first place?
Once, when our faithful old washing machine broke down, Taller Half dismembered the poor thing to find the problem. It needed a water pump transplant. The operation was successful, and the machine recovered and lived a long useful life — without several important-looking parts.
Such was not the case with the toilet. Suffering from chronic overflow problems, it needed new water tank innards. Naturally, the replacement innards had to be modified. The
modifications process resulted in the usual leftovers but with a difference. Those particular leftovers obviously had a vital function. Without them our toilet emulated a geyser gushing forth impressive spumes of water when flushed.
By the time he found a plumber willing to make the repairs to that toilet, Taller Half was beginning to have grave doubts about his fix-it abilities. In fact, our terrified tax deduction, also known as our house, kept a leaking pipe under the kitchen sink a secret for several years. By the time we discovered it, the damage was extensive, requiring repairs needing more time and talent than Taller Half could handle.
So now we help keep contractors in business.