Girl with a Pink Drill
I had a father who tinkered with and tackled any home repair, but he never taught me or my five siblings how to do anything. He shooed us away, finding our presence irritating. In his mind, children, especially girls, didn’t have enough common sense to handle tools or problem solve. My mother upheld this conviction. Aside from house maintenance, she let him own the checkbook, the income, the decisions, the discipline, and the people in the household. She solely depended upon him, just the way they both liked it. He could be king. She could adore him.
My mother’s instruction on helplessness taught me to cry, beg, bat my lashes, and flatter if I needed help. Only a man could fix what was broken.
I learned basic bookkeeping in high school, so I did manage a bank account at eighteen. I took pride in this, a one-up on my mother. At twenty-one, I got my first credit card, a one-up on my father who thought them useless. It was me who rescued him during an emergency car repair while traveling out of state.
When I married my husband John, I handled the finances and day-to-day needs. John didn’t fix things. He owned screwdrivers, even a red tool box with a socket set, but he had the smoothest hands I ever held. No callouses because he did nothing with his fingers but punch in numbers on a phone or type on a keyboard. If something broke in our house, I got out the Yellow Pages. Grass needed cutting? Call Pedro. Painting? Call Petey or Raymundo. Fence installation? Call Roger.
When John passed away, hiring a handyman became expensive. And embarrassing. I once had a smoke alarm beeping that I couldn’t locate. I swore the noise came from a hard-wired system in the hall ceiling. It was eight-thirty in the evening and I was going nuts from the noise. I called my go-to handyman, and we found the culprit…on a shelf in the bedroom closet. Battery operated. Red-faced, I handed over a 9-volt.
When I moved back to my old home state, I knew I could call one of my three brothers, who each now live twenty minutes from me. I did call one for the garage door that fell off its hinge and another for the computer that didn’t work right when I tried to install a docking station. But my brothers can’t be here 24/7, and a new house requires daily jobs. It was time for me to grow a pair.
I bought myself a drill. Pink, of course. Thanks to You Tube, I learned what a “chuck” is and got the proper bits locked into it. I hooked my tape measure to my waistband and hefted a pencil. Buzz, buzz, whirr, whirr. I put up bathroom hooks, a kitchen broom bar, and assembled two nightstands and a hallway table.
I discover I love the power.
Oh, big deal you say. But these small steps elevate me above my old self. I’ve proven my parents wrong and picked up where John failed. I’ve destroyed my old incapable belief system. I can help myself if I want. With my drill in hand, I feel like the Rifleman, welding my weapon, my icy confidence glaring back at me in the mirror.
Yet, from time to time I still regress. I loathe painting. And mowing grass. Hammering large nails is hard work, not to mention painful and slow. I admit it. I pull out the little princess routine sometimes, or hire out. I’m smart enough to use every tool in my bag.