My old man is a man of mystery. In my childhood, right up to when my one-day-to-be-wife told her parents about him, he was thought by some to be an arms dealer. I had friends at school who thought he was a spy. I had one girl believing he was a karate-equipped rogue agent, but considering the girl that probably doesn’t reflect on him, but her.
The truth is my old man is an aeronautical engineer and mild-mannered man of integrity. So, despite what I may have told the odd sexy but dim-witted girl in a bar in an intimate moment, he never taught me how to kill with my bare hands or escape from an orbiting satellite. In fact, when it comes to practical, he didn’t teach me much at all. (Unless you consider being even-handed, obeying rules and not taking unnecessary risks handy, that is.)
No one understands moralistic and well adjusted people, so like I say: man of mystery.
Anyway, he didn’t teach me to change a washer or build a cubby house. Hell, he didn’t even teach me to shave. He might have taught me to build an effective radar system for military aircraft, but oddly, we never had to so we never did.
So when it comes to using power tools and building stuff, I have never felt all that comfortable. It was with trepidation that I’ve been picking up practical skills over the last few years. Finally, a few weeks back, I finally felt like I could take on a project by myself. A solo mission.
And here it is. It may not be much, but it did it all by myself without help, and without any input form so-called experts (except the guys at Bunnings who tried to redesign my project, circumvented a range of fuckups and took a hefty wad of cash in return). This boardwalk goes from the backdoor to most of the way to the washing line, where my budget would go no further.
And you know what? I may not have a Mick Jagger swagger, but somehow I see in other men’s eyes – even men who I don’t know and who can only know of my conquest by the tell tale band aids on my office worker hands - a glint of respect.
In fact, maximum respect and both eye glints is what Ive observed. You sway more than swagger, thats what Ive heard anyway.
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