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If laundry list needs bucket list, call Dad
(by Christine Thome - October 22, 2008)
BEYOND MY CONTROL, BY CHRISTINE THOME
If laundry list needs bucket list, call Dad
TGIF no longer stands for "Thank God it's Friday." In our house, TGIF means, "the God-blessed (insert name of household appliance) is Fried!"
It never fails. If an appliance is going to break or a child is going to get sick, it will occur after 5 p.m. on a Friday. Last weekend, it was my washing machine that decided to call it quits.
Not only did I have about 10 loads of laundry to complete, but my son had finally brought home his football uniform that never saw the inside of a washing machine all season. Only the dogs were able to tolerate the smell. But then again, they rub their ears in nasty-smelling stuff all the time.
I placed his smelly uniform in the washing machine, poured in three times the amount of detergent needed, quickly closed the lid and pulled the knob on.
Nothing.
I turned the knob several more times and pulled it on again.
Nothing.
Hoping for a miracle, I opened the lid, held my nose with one hand and jostled the clothes around before pulling the knob on again.
Nothing.
I kicked the machine, swore and banged my fists on the top of it.
Nothing.
"John!" I yelled to my husband. "The washing machine is broken!"
John approached the washing machine, and, after a few minutes of turning the knob, jostling the clothes and swearing, he too declared it broken.
"I'll call the guy," I said, referring to our local repairman.
"It's the weekend. I'm not paying weekend prices. Let me try to fix it first," he said.
John is very handy around the house, but the problem is that he can't do anything by himself. Throughout our marriage, whenever John has attempted to fix a broken appliance or piece of furniture, I have been required to stand sentry, like the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, until he barks an order. Most of the time, he expects me to read his mind and actually know what a monkey wrench or drill bit is and where it is located. By the end of the day, I am so angry with him that he's lucky he doesn't have a drill bit going through his forehead.
However, our son recently reached the age where he is now strong enough and tall enough to help his father around the house. Plus, John has made it pretty clear that, if the kid wants a roof over his head, he has no choice.
"Jack!" John yelled. "Grab my tools and get up here to help me with the washing machine!"
Dragging John's bucket of tools, which he keeps in a vomit bucket provided to us by the pediatrician's office years ago when we were traveling with a flu-ridden child, Jack appeared in the laundry room.
"Dad," he pleaded, "just call the guy!"
"We are the guys, Jack! Come on, we can do this," John replied, sounding more like a cheerleader than a fix-it guy.
"Rah! Rah!" I mouthed to Jack as I backed out of the room.
About an hour later, Jack and John appeared downstairs, vomit bucket of tools in hand and a look of complete loss on their faces.
"Go ahead, call the guy," John said, resigned to his failure as a fix-it guy.
"I'm going to shower," he said. "Where is my blue golf shirt?"
"In the dirty laundry," I replied
"And my red shirt?" he asked.
"Same."
After his shower, John appeared downstairs dressed in a shirt that somehow managed to hide from my years of closet purgings. A shirt so dreadful and out of style that words escaped anyone who looked at it.
Except for our son.
Stopping his text messaging for a moment, he appraised his father up and down, shook his head and announced, "Yep -- you 'da guy, Dad!"
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