HANDY MAN

Neither my father nor I was ever "handy"...you know like being able to fix simple things..or hammer a nail.  First of all we never had the right tool to work with. ( I always used an old hammer with a loose head that would sometimes fly off...until a lesbian friend of mine stopped by and nearly had her head knocked off while I was making some repairs on my outdoor manger...which sent her to her one thousand piece Craftsman set in the back of her truck for a real hammer which she said to keep.
 I suppose my lack of skill was partly due to being afraid of most of the men who lived near us when I was a kid...either they were building really intricate victorian fretwork for their porches which looked like it was going to be a lifelong project, or they were like Beecher who lived next door and could fix all kinds of motors and stuff...all of which looked explosive and capable of exploding.  He'd sometimes invite me to help him in his garage with a giant compressor or something, and he'd yell at me the whole time and tell me about some dirty pictures he wanted to show me from a National Geographic.  The pictures seemed almost as scary as Beecher was.  It wasn't long until I hid from him in our forsythia bushes when I heard his car screeching down the street.  He always had a knife with him and a piece of rope hanging from his jeans. Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to him....actually I'd like to beat him up.
  My Dad and I once tried to build an addition to our dining room table which was actually an old table with two tapebig sheets of plywood on top...(covered of course at all times with a gorgeous lace cloth....after all we weren't exactly savages ).  My partner was entertaining his college friends and as the guest list swelled my dad and I decided we needed an extension for the table. Since we couldn't find anything to work with except for a hacksaw and a hatchet. We both were like two morons sawing...hammering nails (with the hatchet) that were way too big, and both using words we didn't normally say in each others presence, and giving up the whole project about fifty times. HOWERVER...we did make this thing...attached it to the table with duct tape (naturally)...and out came the good china and the over the top centerpieces and the fake silver candelabras. The crowd came and ate like field hands...drank everything in the house, marveling the whole time about the big spread...while I was sweating bullets...imagining an eminent collapse and blood curdling screams. All went well....the crowd finally dispersed, I cleared the table...anxious for the post mortem discussion with my mate, then of course when I slightly moved one of the chairs the whole marvelous addition collapsed in a heap.
   My dad and I never did a project again...but we talked about our big semi achievement for years...and future elegant dinner parties had definite limited numbers for the rest of our lives.