Roger’s Reality: What are these things?

By Roger Owens

What are these things? I mean I know what they are, I’m not stupid! But what are they doing, damn it? What are they doing? What are they doing there, or there, or there? What right do they have to just lay around like that? What right? Laughingly, accusingly, disdainfully. Just laying there. Cluttering up the place, getting in the way, serving no useful purpose, but most of all irritating the living hell right out of me. Just a year or two ago, any tool or implement I possessed would scurry in a fright to its appointed station rather than have its master find it out of place. A place for everything, by God, and everything better be in it if everything knows what’s good for it.
    But no more. For my youthful sins of vigor – so I’m told – the vengeful god Arthritis has lashed me to the mast of the Good Ship Disability, which sails me forever up and down before the Sirens of Duty, who continually call out to me to get off my ass, to take care of business, to quit being a pussy and be a MAN. Men fix things, they make things, they take care of things. And those things! Those thrice-damned things! It’s like they’re whispering behind their hands, having a little private joke at my expense. I walk unsteadily by one unfinished job after another, pass one unquestionable failure of initiative after another, getting madder with every stiff, ungainly step. They aren’t whispering now, they’re speaking clearly. Sniggering, snorting, mocking. It’s like running a gauntlet of shame. The shattered Doughboy cries, “Glue me!” The bushes lean into the windows, scrabbling greenwoody fingers on the glass, “Trim us! Butcher us, we don’t care! Just do something!” What is that wrench doing there, rusting, just rusting? That old hose by the water pump, why wasn’t it in the trash ages ago? The entire pump, filter, and hoses from the last above-ground pool (circa 2008) moldering away in the overgrown brush like some interstellar artifact, with arms like the robot on the old “Lost in Space” that seem to wave in alarm, literally shouting at me, “Throw me away, Will Robinson!” It nags me from behind the “new” pool, the one I didn’t set up in 2018 because Cindy was so sick and it’s too much work, a total pain in the ass, and I was taking care of her full time then and by the time 2019 came along I was crippled with a bad knee so I had to spend about eight hundred bucks to get the pool set up and filled with water from somewhere other than our well, from which pours coffee-colored toxic waste and no WAY our softener will handle twenty thousand gallons of that sewage.
    This paper plate melting in the daily rains, that broken dog toy, this old rope still hanging in the tree when the tire swing tire has gone, these many years ago, to that great junkyard fire in the sky. One year ago – or was it two? – that shovel would never have had the temerity to be there in the first place, that pool filter, this rake, that drill. That 16-foot 6x6 timber wouldn’t dare still be laying there by the fence; it would be dutifully holding up a tarp over the pool, as it was intended to do. In my perfect world, that replacement pump switch wouldn’t be gathering dust in the shed while its predecessor sullenly continued to operate with the occasional irritated late-night slap or kick. The entire back yard and the islands of overgrown landscaping to the east and north, the giant bird-of-paradise gone hog-ass wild, 30 feet high, crepe myrtles blooming madly despite chronic neglect, bougainvillea high and wide as a dump truck completely covering the side fence and threatening to overwhelm the woodpile like a giant green slow-motion fungus – that would all be under control! It has been under control, until the last couple years. Or is it three? The soaker hose along the house for the hibiscus is disappearing under the very soil, right next to the high-tripod rainbird sprinkler with the busted leg. Now that – the rainbird – is a direct insult. That thing hasn’t worked for three years at least! What the hell is it still doing there? The rotted sections of decking, the leaks in the cabana roof, the automatic pool cleaner that isn’t cleaning, the giant oak tree hanging over the power lines! The plugged AC drain flooding the guest bath, the toilet in the master bath not flushing right, the generator not cranked up for the season, the Explorer riding on tires with the air showing through, the printer eating a daily hearty lunch of documents!
    And all of them – All! All! – whispering, cajoling, clearing their throats, laughing behind secret hands. “Can’t do noth’n, jus’ lazy too, ol losin’ it demencha, y’know….” Nattering, giggling, chattering, niggling, laughing, pointing! “Pick me up, put me away, throw me away, fix me, clean me, scrape me, sand me, paint me, fill me with oil, gas, soap, water, air, alcohol, pesticide! Charge me up, saw me off, screw me down, hang me from the ceiling, bury me, dig me up, cut me down, tighten me, loosen me, me me me me me me me!! DO SOMETHING!!!”
    Can’t trim the bushes, have to fix the weed eater first, it runs the saw too, so forget the dead tree and the weeds and the bushes, took six weeks for the fuckers to fix it last time, the spare on the Explorer shredded in the hatchback, mechanic still futzing around with the other trucks – the AC compressor on the 2013 bad again, didn’t last a week, and the alternator on the 2004 also bad just three weeks out – icemaker isn’t working again, replaced twice in warranty and now out again – don’t get me started on that – bought a sensor, tested the Bendix – it’s good, water supply good – replaced the cycling thermostat, used the proper dielectric grease – still no ice – bought an entire new icemaker – the model apparently more rare than the bleeding Hope Diamond, and for the love of God it comes with two – count them: TWO – entire wiring harnesses and no instructions whatsoever other than to install ALL parts supplied when that way clearly lies madness!!!! YOU get to choose, and I choose and get it right, rewire and replace the entire thing and it works for two weeks, and then, thrice damned by all gods and goddesses from Aphrodite to Zeus, it stops making ice again and SCREAMS “FIX ME!!!” I slam my hand on the table “ENOUGH!!!” and the tableware settles fearfully back with skeptical whipped-dog eyes, watching for the next threat as my head slumps in my palms.
    Vexatious hands flutter irritated, fat cattail fingers before my eyes. With flips of these hands I deny the existence of these things, their obvious hostility, their clamorous accusations, my gestures negate these rude importunate out-of-place THINGS whose only collective sin is throwing my failures in my face. I seek the darkened corners of my ancient Castle of Self-Pity for the assault of my spiteful gaze, dilapidated rooms with musty curtains and rotting tapestries to muffle my crabbed rages, stuffed closets smelling of mothballs and mice and nasty old crinoline lace in which to hide in tearful isolation whispering frantically to myself fearful consolations. I close my ears, hands clasping, shaking, head down, I promise myself no no no no NO NO NO I WILL NOT HEAR THESE THINGS. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!
    I can’t.
    I cannot.
    Do.
    I cannot do.
    I cannot do.

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was nothing I could not do. I once dragged a wooden citrus box that weighed three hundred pounds from the side of I-95 and into the back of my grandfather’s 1965 F100 pickup. The box measured four feet on a side and stood three feet tall. I used two 12-foot 2x4’s to lever it up and in. When I got it home, I put two 2x12 planks nine feet up on either side of two white oaks, and made a treehouse for our son and his friends. A system of pulleys and levers put that citrus box on top of those planks. After that, it was nothing to put a deck and railings on the rest of the planks, a roof of corrugated plastic panels on the box, and to cut a door in the side of the box. That was tough; those boxes, like most heavier freight pallets, are made of low-grade trade oak, hard as a starving winter. It will break your heart, not to mention your saw. But the kids needed a door to go through when they climbed the ladder of steel bathroom towel-holders I screwed into the tree, so cut it I did. You can ruin a few perfectly good chainsaw blades cutting that stuff, but hey, I told you, will you listen up? There was NOTHING I couldn’t do.
    I can’t.
    I cannot.
    Do.
    I cannot do.
    I cannot do.
    I. Can. Not. Do.

Copyright © 2020 by Roger Owens