Dad fixes things

It was always tricky asking my father to help fix something at my condo when I was single. Between the two of us, we were likely to make whatever was broken worse.

Once, one of the bi-fold closet doors came off the track. I could still open and close it, but it was like trying to zip a bulging suitcase. My father initially did not consider this a problem that needed his attention, but eventually, after several complaints from me, he took a look at it. There were trips to Home Depot to get "just the right part." More trips to take back "just the right part" and get one that was definitely the right part.

Despite our best efforts, the door never did work right after that. "It doesn't matter if it stays open all the time, does it?" he said, by way of comfort. He has never been as concerned about things that don't function like they should as about things that don't look nice, like his car having a teeny smudge on it. That is worthy of his instant attention.

After we had "fixed" the closet door, I asked my dad to take a look at a shelf that had fallen down in another closet. "While you're here," I said apologetically. The shelf had come completely out of the wall and collapsed in the middle of the night, depositing four phone books, three baskets of assorted mittens and hats and gloves, and two umbrellas all over the floor of the closet, and the racket it had made was worse than any nightmare I might have been having at the time.

"Hmmm," he said when he had opened the closet and surveyed the damage. "Well, do you really need that shelf?"

I just looked at him. "Okay, let's get to work," he said, sighing.

It should have been a simple matter to put the shelf back, but somehow we managed to turn it into a project more akin to splitting an atom. Like the closet door, this shelf never was quite the same after we tinkered with it, although at least it never fell again. At least while I was living there.

We cleaned up the mess -- our fix-it projects always produced an impressive amount of debris -- and my dad went to the kitchen to dump the dust we had created in the trash can. He was in there for quite some time, and I heard a variety of noises. I wondered vaguely why it was taking him so long to throw something in the garbage when I heard a small crrrakkk.

"What are you doing?" I called from the living room.

"Breaking the lid on your trash can," he said.

"If I'd wanted the lid broken, I could have done it myself," I said, coming into the kitchen.

"Well, I wasn't trying to break it. I was just trying to throw this stuff away." He looked from the broken piece of the trash can lid in his hand to the full dustpan in his other hand, then back to the broken piece. The lid was now permanently standing at attention, exposing all the food containers, paper towels, and discarded fix-it parts in the trash can. "Maybe I can fix it," he said.

"No, that's okay, Dad," I said hastily. "I think we've done enough fixing for one day."

After my dad had gone home, I went to Home Depot and bought a new trash can. Maybe my closet door would never close again, and maybe my shelf would always lean, but at least my trash would not be exposed.