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Do it yourself? Now you’ve done it!
Cheryl O'Donovan
Updated: May 16, 2012 4:26PM
The telephone trembled as my husband approached it with a screwdriver.
The microwave muttered, “Poor dude can’t even dial himself to call 9-1-1.”
He dislodged the telephone from its base and began gouging at wires.
Thus, our plunge into the abyss known as Do-It-Yourself Repairs began.
In this grim economy, we are doing everything to save money, and this means my husband totes around a tool belt like Wyatt Earp and yells the second we misplace his light saber (the flashlight).
To be fair, he is a genius at disassembling a computer until it is nothing but a motherboard, video card and RAM, and a mini-Bill Gates pops out like a cuckoo clock and chimes, “Upgrade.”
Appliances, however, are proving to be an adventure.
The repair didn’t take long. He secured the phone back on its base. “Finished.”
Later, when Hillary Clinton called to commiserate on her recent photo wearing glasses and no makeup, I told her how hefty I looked at my recent writers’ conference. Dang it, I could barely hear Hillary over the roar of deafening static. Either my husband’s repair job needed some tweaking, or I’d have to pull out the Morse Code machine.
His jaw locked as I pointed this fact out.
“What did you do?” he accused.
Somehow I am responsible for this problem. I picked up the receiver wrong.
“I jabbed at it with live wires until I short-circuited the entire house.”
“Very funny, Cheryl. Here. Move aside. I’ll work on it again.”
The next morning, our phone rang at 6:45 a.m.
Standing in the kitchen, I frowned. Who could be calling this early?
I answered, the static now gone.
“Can you hear me now?” My ornery husband teased from his cell phone. He even added the slightly nasal tone, so he sounded exactly like that Verizon Wireless guy.
Those living in the Chicago area may someday hear a giant Zzzzzt! and marvel as the Great Lakes region is cloaked in a bizarre blackout. Commonwealth Edison sleuths will eventually track the origin to our house and to the toolbox belonging to my husband.
Well, “toolbox” may be too formal. He’s got one of my old nail files in there.
