July 19, 2010
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Hammer Time
At my creative writing group last week, our leader spead out several random physical objects onto a blanket in the middle of the floor and asked us to select an item to write about. Since the item and the story I chose relates to when I first met David, I thought I’d share it here. I picked up and wrote about a HAMMER:
He can fix anything. I didn’t know that, the first night we met at the dance club, and had he mentioned he was good with tools I’m sure it would have seemed odd and I wouldn’t have given him my phone number.
But he didn’t mention it and I did give him my number and, to my surprise, he did call the next day.
“What are you doing today?,” I asked.
“Remodeling my parents’ bathroom.”
“Wow,” I said, although I had no idea what that involved, but it sounded impressive. My own parents rented our house – had always rented – and while my dad seemed handy enough – working on cars and building a picnic table for our dining room table and generally keeping his few tools neatly lined up on a worktable in the garage – we never had to “remodel” anything. But even if I didn’t know the specifics about remodeling a bathroom, I knew enough to be impressed with a 21-year-old guy who spent his weekend working on his parents’ house and seemed to be enjoying it.
“You should come over and see what I’ve done.”
“Uh- o.k.” I’d never been been invited to a bathroom remodel before. It wasn’t the usual date, that’s for sure, but the next weekend he drove over to pick me up and took me back to his house to survey the tilework and the new toilet and his mom’s wallpaper choice.
We were standing in the unfinished shower when his mom came in and asked if we wanted lunch. She called me “Pam.” He corrected her – “It’s Tiffany.” She apologized and laughed nervously and scurried back to the kitchen.
“So, you’ve brought a lot of girls to see the bathroom?,” I teased.
“No, she never even met Pam. She was a girl I talked about when I was doing construction in Fresno over the summer.”
We moved on from the bathroom and he showed me the new fireplace he’d put in. “Wow.” And then the garage he’d converted into a bedroom for his younger brother, still in high school. The room was strewn with dirty clothes and smelled like pot. “No wonder your parents want him to live in the garage.”
“You’re funny,” he said.
I was joking around, but I was truly impressed witih all the work he’d done, especially since he also had a regular paying job working in bike repair shop and went to college part-time.
“What are you studying?,” I asked.
“Communications. Video Production.”
“You should be a contractor, though.” My practical working-class side was showing. I had taken Accounting and Typing as electives in high school and was working a full-time office job, not even going to college yet.
“No – it’s just for fun.”
I didn’t see the “fun” in drywall and tile and painting, but was there something in the back of my still-teenaged mind that told me he’d be handy to keep around? Because he has been. 24 years later and he’s remodeling *our* bathroom and bedroom. I complain about the electric drill on the floor that I stub my toe on at night. The sawdust, the one wall without insulation that keeps the room cold, the missing toilet, and the dangling wires, an electrical accident waiting to happen. The work has been dragging on for months and years because he has another regular day job, plus two kids to parent in the meantime.
It’s not so “fun” anymore, but what did I think I was getting myself into when I found out what he was doing that first weekend we met??
