I am incompetent. My incompetence extends to most things normal human beings can do in their sleep. At a very early age my father told me I had better get a college education and a job in an office pushing paper. It was his way of saying I wouldn’t trust this kid to hammer a nail straight. I am a living example of my father’s gift of prophecy. What would you do if you had a son who unscrewed an entire tulip lamp in the living room while trying to change a light bulb?
There was a time I thought driving a car was in my future. My cousin gamely tried to teach me to drive his mother’s car. Each time we thought I was ready, he had me drive to the police barracks to take the test. Each time the result was the same – I failed. All the trooper had to do was get in the car and I’d forget where to put the key. My driver’s permit expired with the first three failures. I finally made it on the second permit (I think the troopers were tired of seeing my face and chalked up my problem to "nerves"). That’s when my Air Force buddies decided to put me at the wheel on the Ohio Turnpike – despite my protestations I was a "city driver" – in the days when the speed limit was 70 miles an hour. After about 15 hair-raising minutes (Sandra Bullock could have made it into "Speed 3"), they relieved me of my duties and I haven’t driven since as my long-suffering wife and friends can attest.
You would be more likely to find the entire catalog of Van Morrison recordings in my basement than a tool kit. I am still busy trying to discern the difference between a pair of pliers and a wrench (that is, if I had either). There was a time my wife thought encouragement was the answer. He just has to gain a little confidence, she thought. Why not let him re-caulk the ceramic tile in the bathroom shower?
Why not, indeed? She found out why not when she checked in to see how I was doing and I greeted her smiling, covered with caulking material. In fact, I had caulked everything in the bathroom except between the tiles.
Not one to give up easily, my wife turned me toward house painting. Surely I could paint. Everyone can. Painting is so easy, guys get bored doing it. I never got bored. Instead I painted over the doorknobs and part of the window and, for good measure, some of our clothing hanging in the bedroom closets. It might have been at that point my wife decided we would have to pay to get the house painted just as we pay for most everything else. In fact, I have determined that except for having sex, eating in good restaurants and writing this column, I probably should be paying someone to do everything else in my life.
My wife actually congratulated me recently when I correctly identified the location of the one Phillips screwdriver in my house. That was when we both knew I was on a roll. I followed up the Phillips success by using that same screwdriver to tighten a loose screw in the cold water faucet in my bathroom. And that wasn’t all. I changed a light bulb in the kitchen fixture using my own initiative since my wife was out at the time. I did so despite the fact the burned out bulb was screwed in so tightly my wife had given up on trying to change it herself. Soon after, I unjammed the laser jet printer in our back room. I am now convinced a space alien is inhabiting my body, sort of like that old ’50s movie "It Came from Outer Space." I am considering doing a Bob Villa-type show on WHYY where I can explain how to do the little jobs that elude some of us: "Today Tom Cardella will show you how to turn on a computer or tie a trash bag" (although I’m still mastering that one).
The thing about my incompetence is I often wonder what would have happened if I had been lucky enough to go into politics and maybe gotten elected president. Why, I might have started a war thinking there were weapons of mass destruction where there weren’t any, forgot to equip the troops with the proper body armor, played video games while a hurricane wiped out an American city or filled all sorts of important jobs with incompetent flunkies just like me. I could have taken a budget surplus and turned it into a deficit as far as the eye could see or devised a Medicare drug program you need a Rosetta stone to interpret.
Dad, your little boy could have been president!
