I Am No Bob Villa

I have a friend, Sid. Sid is into home improvements, as is his father-in-law, Dave...a master carpenter. I am not. Actually, in the carpentry department, I'm more of a failure. Sure, I'm good at reading and stuff, but I can barely turn on a light and I use the tool set my dad got me before I joined the military as cooking implements and utensils. This causes much distress to Sid's father-in-law, who has tattoos and loves only two things: fixing shit and cigarettes.

Also, I am incredibly lazy. I remember growing up I’d do anything to get out of doing some home improvement-type project, and to this end I’ve faked numerous maladies, including but not limited to diarrhea, a hamstring pull, seizures, and a drug overdose that got me out of redoing the spare bedroom for a whole week (score!).

But Sid called me up to join him in helping Dave with some home improvement projects, because at the very least I can lift things or hold them in place. Sure, I may not take orders well, like when during the last project he asked me for an allen wrench and I handed him a picture of a puppy that I thought was cute, but at the very least I'm a body with hands.

Because I avoid home improvements projects like women avoid me after I’ve had thirteen drinks or whenever or all the time, they are never announced. This was the case this past week, when Sid called me over to his house, and when I arrived said “I need you to take a ride with me.”

“I need you to take a ride with me” is the death knell, the phrase that sets off the alarm in my brain that screams, “Manual labor is imminent! Manual labor is imminent! Avoid at all costs!” I have learned to recognize this phrase instantly as the beginning of something terrible. I learned very early that when Sid said this, he wasn’t planning on taking me to get ice cream or to the flower show. No, that usually means a trip to Home Depot or the hardware store or I don’t know - some other manly place with tools and shit.

And so we went to Lowe’s to get twelve feet of flooring for his kitchen. Sid explained that the project, which would be undertaken the next day, would be easy. Nothing about moving a refrigerator and stove and “tracing the measurements” and “making cuts” sounded easy to me. So what did I do? I left his house shortly afterwards, and went back home that night. Instead of helping put in a floor in my friend’s kitchen, I got home at 10pm on Friday night so my friend Brian and I could sit in my living room pounding Bud Lights, going through them so quickly and being so lazy about it that instead of getting up and getting a beer, we were grabbing two at a time and sitting them on the table in front of us, because we are the laziest drunks in the world. And, oh yeah, we’re awesome.

In my defense, I did call the next day to see how the project was going, and Dave said it was going quite well, thanks in no small part to the fact that I was not there to fuck it up and say things like, “Can we take a break? I really want some coconut cream pie” or having exchanges with my Sid like:

Me: “Sid, my arm hurts. Is it supposed to hurt like this when I hold this cutter-thingy?”
Dave: [smoking] “John, you haven’t even done anything yet, except stand there, complain that your legs hurt from standing, and read my wife’s US Weekly.”
Me: [screaming, then storming off] “Why can’t you accept that I’m not like you, Dave?!? You just don’t understand me!!!”
Dave: [smoking, shaking head] “Christ.”

And yes ladies, I AM single.