Unglued

I only have average skills as a do-it-yourselfer, but am extraordinarily creative when it comes to bungling. I can botch things in ways that would never even occur to the average handyman. For example, while taking on tasks intended to save us money, I once managed to break the windshields of both the family vehicles within two months, which I suspect is a record.

 

Like any conscientious husband, I keep most of my blunders secret. Otherwise, if I have a bad run of visible ones – such as when my wife has to render first aid – I’m afraid the list will get so unnerving that she’ll hide my power tools to save me from myself.  

 

Sometimes a screw-up is just too spectacular not to share, and this one requires a bit of back-story.  After serving dual 30-year-sentences working in Los Angeles, my wife and I escaped that moron-clogged messopolis and moved to the Highlands (a friendlier, slower-paced but not moron-free zone; alas – tailgaters on Bardstown Road could practice drive-by proctology). 

 

As I prepped our little Toyota SUV for the cross-country drive, I realized the dysfunctional sun visor on the driver’s side would trigger an ugly tantrum somewhere along the 2,100-mile route and temporarily strain my marriage. So, before we left on our weeklong odyssey, I cut two little rectangles of Velcro to glue in place to hold the thing up.  I squeezed and pierced and pounded the calcified little container of Super Glue, but couldn’t extrude a drop. Figuring it must be virtually solid inside, I decided to cut it in two, hoping to coax just enough liquid out to do the job. 

 

I put the Velcro on my work table and cut the tube in half. Nearly a teaspoon of glue spilled out and fastened three fingers of my left hand together so fast that it took my breath away – even the breath I needed to bark a vulgarity. I reflexively held my hand away from my body, my logic being, I suppose, that keeping it at a distance might prevent something essential like a heart valve from being glued shut. The feeling was oddly disturbing, since there was no pain, just a sick feeling of stupidity and digital paralysis. 

 

I smeared what liquid I could onto the Velcro with my fingers and my pocketknife blade. One of the Velcro strips stuck securely to my index finger. Then my pocketknife stuck fast to the side of my right thumb, like an extra Edward Scissorhands-type digit. I ran to stick the other strip to the visor, praying all the while that a neighbor wouldn’t stop by to ask why all the tools and materials were adorning Magneto Boy. 

 

I positioned the strip on the visor with my fingers still stuck together and the knife and Velcro strip still dangling. I pried off the strip and pressed it to the ceiling using a Styrofoam cup that happened to be in the car.  With the strips in place, I quickly walked back inside and closed the garage door to unstick myself unobserved. Two of my fingers were still stuck together, the knife still dangled from my thumb; and, after tearing away the cup, I had two dime-sized hunks of Styrofoam on my palm and thumb. 

 

Goo-Gone, paint thinner and coarse sandpaper abraded the various foreign objects off my hands, and I lost enough skin to upholster a penny. I was left with a vinyl-like covering over the ends of my fingers, and made a mental note that my fingerprints were probably illegible. The glue wore off after two days, but the lesson stuck. I’ll never again cut open a Super Glue tube – not without proper preparation, anyway. But I can almost guarantee that I’ll do something equally embarrassing and counter-productive. And after muttering about it and kicking myself for a couple of weeks, maybe I’ll have the sense to just write a column about it and put it behind me.