Benjomatic ‘Live At Club Triangle 5/28/05’

Phew! Done at last!

I just got through helping my father with some ceiling fans. I didn’t have to crawl around in the attic or anything like that… I had to simply hold the fan as he attached it to the bracket on the ceiling. Simple stuff, really.

But it’s not all that simple for me.

When I was a kid, I would high tail it in the other direction whenever Dad whipped out a toolbox and set out to fix something. That sort of stuff doesn’t interest me in the least. I’m not a mechanical person and have no desire to be.

So as I stood there holding the ceiling fans being put into place by my father, I had to muster up the same strength that Superman would use to hold up the Washington Monument after being knocked over. Feelings of restlessness set in very quickly whenever I’m doing something mechanical and it takes every fiber in my being not to run somewhere else to do anything… something else.

My father pointed out something that I have known about for years… “You know son, when I’m gone, you’re gonna pay through the nose to have someone do this sort of stuff for you,” he said to me just minutes ago.

I’ve already learned how to change my own oil and fix flat tires. And a few years ago, I helped a girlfriend with putting up curtain rods by using a drill. All proud moments in my life and in theory, should get me through life.

But deep down inside my dark little heart, I know what he says will come to pass. I also plan to take on some projects myself… Well, at least the small ones.

Electricity scares me to death and if I were to put in a ceiling fan myself, I would be extra safe and shut off the whole house. My Dad… He just keeps the switch in the off position.

And here’s a little embarrassing thing about me… Jump-starting a vehicle with jumper cables frightens me greatly. Ever since I was a kid, I have had a fear that the battery would explode right into my face and the car would be thrown into the air to land on top of me. So when anyone got out the jumper cables, I headed for safety that 500 yards would provide me.

I remember a time that I got into the Rock 92 van to work a remote and the engine wouldn’t turn over. I had noticed that the lights were very weak and determined that it was the battery.

Luckily for me, the KZL van was still parked next to her sister and I pulled out the jumper cables. I didn’t want to do it, but I had no choice and no one else to rely upon. I remembered that it was important to put the black on the negative and the red on the positive. And everything worked out fine and I lived to write about it later.

Still, I don’t trust jump-starting at all. But I am a big fan of “pop-starting” a vehicle with a manual transmission. That… Doesn’t frighten me.