Every time I join the herd stumbling through my local Home Depot's enormous barn-like glass doors, the doors that dutifully glide open for me with the exact same democratic welcome they extend to master carpenters, certified electricians and Bob Vila, I hear two competing voices in my head.
One is the deliriously optimistic chorus from the kiddie show "Bob The Builder". The British guy singing it sounds like he’d probably identify a screwdriver as a cocktail:
“Can we fix it?? Yes we can!!!”
Then there’s the other voice, the one that resembles Supreme Chancellor Palpatine trying to convince Anakin about the allure of The Dark Side:
“Abandon all hope ye who enter here.”
I try to ignore them both and find some middle ground: “Go ahead, delude yourself for a while, even though you know you’ll end up calling a professional.”
I have mixed feelings about going into stores like Home Depot. They’re almost identical to the feelings I had when I was a student at Ohio State. Or when I'm in a bookstore.
Being surrounded by all that knowledge or in the case of Home Depot, all that hardware, makes me feel like I’m having a temporary out-of-body experience. Maybe it’s more like an “out of my head” experience. For a brief moment I feel a giddy sense of being all-powerful, like I can do anything I want to do. Be anything I want to be.
Build anything I want to build.
Then I remember my limitations and why I’m there. In this most recent case, I had a stopped-up bathtub and two light fixtures where the bulbs had broken off and the metal stem things were stuck in the sockets.
This would be grade school stuff to any handy-man.
At Ohio State I briefly thought I might be medical school material until I started routinely dropping and/or failing the required math and science courses.
I recall that last meeting with my academic advisor, the one where she suggested we part ways and break off all contact immediately, like it was yesterday. Maybe not yesterday exactly; more like the last time I was in a Whole Foods store.
“Organic chemistry - how ridiculous.” I sneered. “Is that the biggest oxymoron you’ve ever heard or what - chemical-free chemicals?”
Then I began grilling her about the possibility of “more relaxed” med school requirements in places like Bangladesh and Zaire where maybe I could hire an oppressed but bright teenager to take all my tests and carry my books for me in exchange for English lessons and an encouraging word or two every day.
What a bitter disappointment. My mother once told me I could be anything I wanted to, even a doctor, and mothers always know best.
“Why not? Stranger things have happened,” she said when I floated the idea past her as she looked away and blew a stream of Virginia Slims smoke out the kitchen window. “Maybe you’ll discover a cure for your sister’s bad moods. Give it a shot. Pun intended,” she snickered.
Yesterday when I went to Home Depot I was reminded of my thwarted medical ambitions when I confronted aisle after aisle of confusing terms. Then I realized I was reading the Spanish versions of “Plumbing, Electrical and Appliances.”
Plomeria, Ferreteria and Electrodomesticos made me feel like I was in a Mexican zoo. I immediately thought “colorful birds, a cafeteria for ferrets and domesticated eels” which in turn clued me in to why med school might not have been right for me. I was always making irrelevant connections. Not the best thought process when one’s diagnosing potentially fatal conditions.
Actually, being in a Home Depot wasn't unlike being in a hospital's ER, except it was easier to get answers.
I flagged down a guy in Iluminacion and explained the problem with the broken bulbs. “Please tell me you can help,” I begged. “Please! You’re my last best hope.”
No problem. He didn’t hesitate. His prescription? A potato and a pair of needle-nose pliers.
“Jam the potato into the socket and turn it as if you were unscrewing the bulb,” he said. “If that doesn’t work try the pliers but the potato usually does the trick.”
“Oh thank you doc- I mean sir,” I breathed and headed over to Plomeria where I was warmly greeted by a bearded guy in an orange apron; it was a mess. Looked like he’d just come out of surgery.
“What have you tried so far,” he asked after I told him the water in the tub was inches from the top.
I told him about the jugs of Liquid-Plumr and the many long things I’d stuck repeatedly down the drain in the vain hope of dislodging what was most like a big clump of my daughter’s long hair, assorted dead skin cells and body grime.
“First we’ve got to change your thinking about this,” he said confidently and whipped out a pad and a pen. Then he sketched the inner workings of what was going on behind the tub and proceeded to explain why my approach was all wrong.
“You have to unscrew the plate below the faucet and go in that way,” he said when he finished and showed me why I wasn’t reaching the clog.
I stared at his diagram full of twisty tubular things running into each other. It looked incredibly similar to human plumbing.
“My God, this is just like operating,” I murmured to myself.
“Excuse me?”
“Never mind and thank you Dr. Welby,” I gushed as I gathered up the diagram and also the rubber gloves and $15 laparascopic-like tool he’d recommended.
Why had I never considered becoming a plumber when the doctor thing didn't pan out? I chided myself.
I could have had the professional satisfaction of diagnosing and treating serious conditions, the worst news I’d ever have to give anyone was my bill and I’d never have to cringe and shriek “Ewwww, gross, I am not touching that! Now put on your clothes and get out. Get out!”
There wouldn’t have been all those student loan bills either. Student loans for an English major were bad enough; I can’t imagine what I would have racked up in medical school bills even if I’d gone to one in Myanmar.
At the checkout I tried to make my $20 health insurance co-pay but apparently Aetna’s not one of Home Depot’s preferred providers.
That was okay; I couldn’t wait to get home and try out the procedures I’d just learned.
Less than an hour later, I was done. I snapped off the super-bright surgical theater quality light I'd picked up on the way home and pulled of my rubber gloves. I whipped off my little face mask and stepped out of my scrubs.
The tub was unclogged and it drained fine. The potato had worked.
There was no anxious family in a waiting room to tell, “It was touch and go for a while, but I think he’s gonna make it.”
But it didn’t matter. Maybe I didn't have the title or the license or the diplomas. But now I know how a successful doctor feels. After all these years, I finally know that indescribable feeling of accomplishment. A feeling that costs some people hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It cost me under twenty bucks. And it was worth every penny.
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