Nor am I a carpenter uncle. In fact carpenters everywhere are loath to be seen in the same world with me. Postmen, by association, despise me.
This weekend I was down south visiting my brother, his wife, and by itty bitty little WelbyNephew. My brother, knowing I was taking a few days off to relax, asked me to help him do a little remodeling in WelbyNephew’s room. Nothing big, just replace a little bit of drywall, build a desk into the wall, fun manly stuff that included hot wings and beer.
It was only supposed to be a morning thing. It’s not like we were going to build a deck or something. So the two of us plus a couple of friends got together for a day of Manly Carpentry Work. (Anyone else hear the theme song to Gilligan’s Island?)
Perhaps my measuring eye was off. Perhaps my hammer aim was a little out of kilter. (What is a kilter, anyway and why would I want to be in a kilter in the first place?) Perhaps we shouldn’t have started drinking beer at 6 AM. I’m not sure about that last one. Beer can’t affect your carpentry skills in a negative way, obviously, or the guy I hired to redo our kitchen cabinets at the Welbyhouse would have never gotten anything done.
I’m not sure of anything other than the beer information and the fact that I managed to accomplish the following things in less time than it takes little WelbyNephew to fill up a diaper:
- Put a hole in the one piece of drywall that wasn’t supposed to be replaced. Not a little hole, oh no, a big gaping hole. See there was a hammer, and since we were ripping down all the drywall Welbybro and I decided that it would be cool to smash some of the drywall with the hammer. We’re still juvenile that way. Every man has a little bit of the “Og Smash!” in him. My inner Og just got a little carried away.
Perfectly trim, place and set a piece of drywall.
Remove same and locate where on the drywall I needed to put the hole for the electrical outlet.
Locate the water pipe that ran into the guest bath. At least it was behind the piece of drywall that somebody was conscientious enough to check up. If no one had checked it that pipe could have gone undisturbed and leak-free for years.
Take a lunch break while the rest of them worked. More of a breakfast break, really, since I was eating a bagel.
Drop a drill on the head of one of the assistant not-carpenters.
Get kicked out of the room by assistant not-carpenter and relegated to cooler duty.
At this point WelbyNephew needed a change. Not that I did it. I pride myself on never having changed a diaper. My heart doesn’t stand still when “Da Doo Run Run.”
So what’s the moral of this story? What’s the point? There isn’t one. This is, after all, a MMP.
-welby (Not Rue)