Prototype Issue
Missives from the Madhouse
Posted by pcaneday
Crooked Little Birdhouse, part 1
A knot of anxiety stirs in the stomach of a father with no carpentry skills when his five year old daughter suddenly announces, “Daddy, I want to build something.” It’s the same anxiety that swells in me when she wants me to dance or play dolls with her. So, I know that participation is mandatory and unavoidable.
My toolbox consists of a rusty hammer, several files I’ve never used, a bent screwdriver once used to dislodge a boulder in the garden and one of those cone-shaped bristles that I hear one uses to scrape the crust off car battery terminals. I don’t recall ever buying any of these items. Perhaps they were “borrowed” years ago when I moved from my parent’s home.
In short, I am no tool man. I drove the same truck for 16 years. Somewhere around year 10 the driver’s seat broke and became a recliner. I attempted to fix this myself and failed. For the remaining 6 years, a crate held my seat back in place, too ashamed was I to show my handiwork to a qualified repairperson. I thank God almost everyday that the guy I sold the truck to never said a word about this. But I miss that crate. It was a good crate.
We had already pounded nails aimlessly into a block of wood the last time my daughter had this urge, so I knew that I needed to be a bit more creative this time. The five year old bores easily. Paris Hilton doesn’t need so much stimulation.
There must be something in our collective subconscious that tells us the birdhouse is the simplest of all wood-making creations. I am not sure where this comes from, but that is the first thing I thought to build. In seventh grade wood shop we made aerodynamic flying ducks. But this took weeks, and that was an age too young to fear the pain of carpal tunnel syndrome. I needed something to build—with a five year old – in one afternoon. Surely the hardware store would have a kit to save me. After all, the hardware store is the E.R. of all merchants.
The wife and I have a secret code. Or rather, I have a code that she has come to understand. After a long, stressful week at the office, when faced with a long, stressful weekend at home, I’ve been known, on rare occasion, to simply need a time out. My wife is usually a pretty good identifier of when I need said time out. It usually comes mid-morning Saturday after waking and consuming my 12th cup of coffee, and not having left for the office yet. One of the children will throw their semi-hourly rant over a swiped toy, food they would rather eat than what they’ve been given (and asked for in the first place), clothes they want to wear which happen to be in the washer at that moment, or any litigious wrong they’ve been done by myself, their mother or sibling. Following my gasket blow and marching one or both children off to their room, the wife will give me a look between mild disgust and fearful lion tamer. It is at this point, if I am thinking with any sanity, that I usually say, “I need to go to the hardware store.”
She’ll look at me quizzically, snigger and ask what the hell I need at the hardware store all of a sudden.
Nothing I can think of, I will tell her, and then she gets it. The hardware store is my self-imposed time out.
I see heaven as the ultimate hardware store; God as the kindly, funny, old guy behind the counter. Bifocals slid half down his nose. He always knows just what you need and gives it to you graciously, especially when you think you know better. But you do have to ask for his help. Jesus is his son, been working in the shop since he was a kid, grew up there. He’s the one sent to aisle 12 to get you what you need, a half-pound bag of grace, 30 feet of hope rope. Occasionally he gets sent on a run to the Smith’s house to help them out with a plumbing problem or something that needs help assembling.
But this was not one of those time out occasions. There was a true necessity for the hardware store if we were to build a birdhouse. This also made for one of those (hopefully) memorable daddy-daughter keepsake moments. I envisioned my daughter’s Nobel Prize for Carpentry & Musical Virtuosity acceptance speech in which she tearfully recalled our sojourns to the hardware store. The vision ends when she twists her ankle, falling offstage, streaming a liturgy of expletives learned from me in our years of wood-working together.
Normally when I take my hardware store sabbaticals, I don’t have a mission. I’ll wander aimlessly, usually beginning with the barbecues and barbecue equipment. Open a few lids until I feel one with just the right weight, imagine how many more square inches of surface grilling space this one has than mine at home. And let’s not even talk about the BTU’s.
Then I’ll amble through the gardening section and imagine transforming my backyard into Eden. A few new flower beds, compost pile and one huge area with every fruit tree, vegetable and herb my family could possibly need to live sustainably from for the rest of our lives. I will provide.
Then there’s the walk through the home organizing aisle. Here I foresee a hook, basket, shelf, cubby, cabinet and roll-away storage bin for everything in the house and garage. Perfect organization is achievable in my mind, and here is the answer.
But today we have a goal. We know what we need. I shop like I drive: I know how to get there, no matter where “there” is, and I won’t stop for directions when lost until the wife threatens divorce. So I go directly to the aisle I determine birdhouse kits will logically be, the lumber aisle.
No birdhouse kits in the lumber aisle.
So off we go to the home and garden section. My mind begins to envision how much fun it would be to entertain friends around this portable fire pit, under this Venetian canopy, sitting on these fabulous new cushioned patio chairs rather than the white plastic ones we have that are about to collapse from sun deterioration. But I snap back to the task at hand, reminding myself about the weight bench I once bought on a whim, promising myself I would use it daily. The only daily use it ever saw was to bear the weight of all the items I stacked on it as storage in the garage.
We find birdseed, and indeed birdhouses in the garden section, but no kits to build one. So, as I had feared, and somewhere deep down hoped, we have to go back to the lumber aisle to find supplies for building our birdhouse from scratch. How hard could it be?
Redwood, pine, cedar, ash. What will work best? It’s obvious. The cheapest. After some pacing up and down the aisle to the five year old’s intoning, “this one looks nice, daddy. This one looks nice, daddy. This one looks nice, daddy,” I finally select two of the cheapest pine planks I could find, selected mostly for their limited knots. What moles are to smooth skin, knots are to wooden boards.
The first indication as to why these boards were so inexpensive should have been clear when I slid them into the cart. Flashback to 10th grade geometry class: two parallel lines are equidistant from each other at every point. These two boards touched each other at two or three points, then veered away from each other at most points. Looked at horizontally, these boards were squiggles, or the wavy sonar reading of something very wrong under the surface.
However, this did not necessarily sound any alarms in my head. For clarification as to why, see above wherein I indicate my carpentry skills. A quick stop to pick up a box of nails, a box very similar to the four unused boxes I already have in the garage and I think we are on our way. But then the thought hits me: where will the birds sit? They need a perch. Back to the lumber aisle and we find the beautiful, organized, color-coded display of dowels. There is something so pleasing to a boy about a dowel. We love sticks, especially sword length sticks. And the dowel is the ultimate stick, the perfect stick. Even the five year old can’t wait to hold the stick. “No, it’s a dowel, honey,” I correct. She pays me no mind.
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