I Am A Total Tool

I am totally inept at anything remotely mechanical. If I empty a pencil sharpener of its shavings, I can never get it put back together again.

I can not use tools. If I try to hammer a nail, I will bend the nail, split the wood, or hammer my thumb. I don’t even know the names of tools. The Husband has an electrical screwdriver, & recently inquired (in front of T, the housemate)- are you going to just use your giant screwing machine for that project?” Yesterday, the Husband was slightly agitated by the fact that I couldn’t figure out how to close up the ironing board. I thought it was enough that I was able to use the iron.

I believe that a most talents are “gifts” from a higher power & innate. I think you can either sing, or you can’t sing. You can study & learn breath control & technique, but you can’t learn to sing. I feel it is the same for acting, drawing, painting, & other artist expressions, & even talents for cooking or gardening seem to be natural inclinations that you are born with. They can be improved on, but either ya got it, or ya ain’t. In the early 90s, I decided that my inability to cook was poppycock. I got out the Husband’s Fanny Framer Cookbook & decided that if I just followed the receipe & instructions, what could go wrong? After a couple of weeks of applying myself & offering up my dishes, the Husband & our friends had an intervention & begged me stop trying to prepare meals (I do a great job of platting food & can present a beautiful looking meal). Really.

I do have talents, some obvious & often expressed, & others not so much, or they are for just a select few. I have a decade's worth of friends, acquaintances & colleagues that have no idea that I am a really good singer. I have other talents that are only shared with very special few, & others, such as gardening that I thrust out in the world to share & even show off.

I am a fearless public speaker & I play several musical instruments. But, if we ever become friends, & I probably would like that… do not say to me- “here, I will hold this length of board while you saw 18 inches off & then you can use the giant screwing machine to attach it to the rest of the wood that you have cut & nailed into place”. You will be sorry.