Put A Lid On It

I’ve always been “blessed” with a memory that kicks in at, shall we say, an unfortunate time.

Years ago, and I do mean years, I was in from North Carolina visiting my home town of New Windsor, Maryland.

I was walking from my mother’s house to the local grocery, with my seven year-old son. Now, I would never knock volunteer firemen, they are heroic---always there when we need them---and the town knew it.

So, we’re passing the firehall (or Far Hall as it’s pronounced in Maryland) and there was a group known as the Junior Far men, perched in front of the hall taking in the noon-day sun.

As we passed, one of the local heroes said, “Hey Cairns, Jack Coe (a volunteer fire chief, local plumber by trade and boyhood “friend” of mine) said he read that story you had in Sports Illustrated last week and he thought it sucked!”

I paused and said, “Well, when you see Jack tell him the next time, he has his head buried in someone’s toilet I’ll try not to lean over his shoulder and criticize his work!”

As I eased down the street, I pictured Coe head down in a hopper and frankly was feeling pretty good about my response.

Until last week!

Years have passed, my friend Coe has passed, the Junior Far Men have long since become senior  firefighters.

Then several weeks ago, all of this, the memory of my friend’s critique of my writing came rushing back as I (red faced, back crying out in pain) found my head in our bathroom toilet trying to accomplish what I’d explained to my wife as one of the easiest plumbing tasks since God gave us the wrench.

Then everything went to crap. And sweating there upside down, I finally almost actually cried out, “Coe, where the %#@ are you when I need you?”

Let me catch you up with me on this project.  Perhaps my prose doesn’t please one and all, maybe they really weren’t up to some of Sports Illustrated’s readers standards. But the cold flushing facts are:

I can’t read or follow directions, never have and never could. And I made this point to my wife who was, in her shout voice, reciting directions to me there in the extremely tight quarters of our family water closet.

The directions had clearly been unclearly written by someone who deserved the critique that my friend Coe had shared regarding my Sports Illustrated article.

“These directions suck!” I said.

If Coe was looking down from the Great Loo in the sky, on one occasion he would have seen a senior citizen who had just qualified as a finalist for the Olympic screwdriver throwing competition.

Nothing fit. None of the plastic bolts stayed in their “designed” place. I had double seats slipping and sliding with each turn of my wrench like the %#@&ing contraptions were being installed on ice.

How bad did it get?

I loosened everything that was semi-attached, threw it back in its box, drove back to the Lowes: “Home Improvement,” stood in the return line forever, then plucked another brand of seat from the shelves and returned, sweating like a, well sorry Coe, plumber.

Did history repeat itself?

Well, yes it did. With my “silent” wife of 55 years minus several dozen installation hours, not speaking since the first lid and directions had arrived, we went to the installation again.

Different lid, same results. Different instructions, same outcome. Then I heard my wife, amid sobs, say, “Why don’t we get your cell phone and try You Tube?

Now, for someone who has admittedly been critical of the Net, Tic Toc, and You Tube I was willing to give YouTube a go.

Already down on my knees with YouTube's instructions calmly voicing from my phone I found myself in the perfect position.

As the last plastic bolt fell into place and I clipped those bastardly little square lids in, I offered up this little prayer, “Thank you YouTube. Thankyou Coe for looking down and blessing this project for now it is I who has had his head in his toilet.