The Thrilling Adventures of Task Man

As I picked up the stray piece of shredded cheddar cheese from the kitchen floor, my eye glimpsed something dark and menacing at the base of the refrigerator. Easy does it, I whispered under my breath, edging cautiously closer for a better look. Suddenly, chillingly, the repulsive ugliness of the situation hit me, sending me clattering back against the kitchen cabinets.

          “Galloping Greyhounds!” I bellowed, for that was my superhero rallying cry when duty called. The dust and crud that had accumulated on the refrigerator vent plate wasn’t going anywhere without a fight. There would be violence and horror and the kind of grunting sounds professional tennis players make when they’re trying to pound the ball. This was no task for an average civilian armed with a common household cleaner. No, my friends, this was a job for . . . ta-da-da-dut-da-da . . . Task Man!

          Now, while some superheroes might regale you with the gory details of the battle that ensued, that’s not how Task Man operates. Suffice it to say that the evil coating of crud that had invaded the refrigerator vent plate was vanquished and all signs of the epic struggle erased. Problem solved. Harmony restored. Best of all, the homeowner, a Mrs. A. Williamson, was left blissfully unaware of the narrowly averted disaster. THAT’S the Task Man way. Quick. Clean. No big scene.

          But wait. What’s that you say? It really is the gory details you want? Okay sicko, you asked for it. I give you this recent episode from the Task Man case files to satisfy your vile craving.

For weeks, a man I will refer to only as “Al Willy” had trouble shaving with his Norelco Reflex Plus electric shaver. The appliance, which normally emitted a robust buzzing sound, was making faint humming noises, not unlike those associated with an aging Paul Simon. A routine grooming task that once took Al Willy only two minutes had now become a five to seven minute skirmish that would often draw blood and leave him visibly shaken and scruffy.

Enter Task Man. One night while Al Willy slept, this chore-crushing crusader crept into the bathroom and sprang the Norelco Reflex Plus from an unguarded medicine cabinet. Prying the triple-headed rotary blade unit from the motor housing, I gasped and staggered back at the putrid proliferation of filth that poured forth. “Galloping Greyhounds!” I roared, though I kept it to a dull roar given that it was the middle of the night and people were sleeping nearby.

Each rotary blade was incased in an immovable band of solid filth and shaving stubble, unable to rotate, unable to shave. I wondered: What kind of depraved madman would neglect to clean out his razor for months on end?  I thought of taking the shaver into Al Willy’s bedroom and shaking its crude contents down his open mouth while he snored. But Task Man was not there to judge. My job was purely pragmatic. Fill what was empty. Empty what was full. Fix what was broken. With daylight about to signal the dawning of a new day, I finished painstakingly hand cleaning each rotary disc, reassembled the shaver, and went to slip out a side door at the far end of the house.

But what’s this? The once steadfast door leading out to the garage was squeaking mournfully, pitifully. Probably hadn’t had its hinges oiled in years. Pulling a small canister of silicone spray from a hidden compartment in my boxer briefs, I took dead aim and doused the shrieking hinges, flicking the door back and forth until it settled into a genial silence. Another job well done. All in a day’s work for the amazing Task Man.

Meanwhile, back in the bathroom, a groggy Al Willy plugs his Norelco Reflex Plus into the wall, splashes some pre-shave lube on his face, and begins to work the shaving head across his stubbled cheek. “Galloping Greyhounds!” he exclaims. “It’s a miracle! I’m getting the closest, smoothest shave I’ve had in months!”

Feeling a strange bulge in his underwear, he reaches down to find a small, half-empty canister of silicone spray.

          “Well that’s weird,” he mutters. “How did that get there?”

          It was a mystery, to be sure, but one that would have to be explored some other time. For the day was new and there were places to go, people to see and tasks to be tackled.

          Man, were there tasks.

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The Repair Impaired

Good handymen are hard to find so I’ll save you some time. I’m not one of them. In fact, anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to my repair work, things often get worse before they get better.

         Ask me to fix a ceiling fan and there’s a good chance I’ll short out all your electricity leaving you sitting in the dark waiting for a breeze that comes only when the fan falls from its hanging bracket knocking you unconscious. Ask me to see what I can do about your noisy dryer and odds are you’ll be noise-free in no time as you hang your next load of laundry from the clothesline I rigged up in your backyard after turning your MayTag into a motionless mass not unlike New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

         My toolbox is a sad symbol of my repair limitations. It contains a hammer, nine different sizes of the same screwdriver, some bent nails left over from hard-knock picture hangings, plus a lifetime supply of miscellaneous scraps of junk such as wire, twine, assorted washers and two-way tape.

         Not only am I ill-equipped to put any of my toolbox items to practical use, I have actually had the shameful bad luck of injuring myself while reaching into the toolbox to get something out. Now, we all have our levels of mechanical aptitude, but I think it fair to say that it takes a special talent to draw blood while rummaging around for something in the bottom of your tool case. If I’ve learned anything from my home repair experiences, it’s that once you’re bleeding, the project tends to go sharply downhill from there.

         No one knows my fix-it flaws better than my wife. The minute something goes wrong, she tactfully maneuvers to nip my home repair misadventures in the bud. When our automatic sprinkler system failed to go off last week, she launched her usual lobbying effort for outside help.

         “Maybe you can call Tommy in the morning,” she gently suggested, referring to the handyman who’s replaced or repaired everything from doors to toilets at our place.

         “I’ll take a look at it, it might be something simple,” I proposed optimistically. Some people just never learn.

         The next morning, after a hardy breakfast and several cups of coffee, I arrived at the job site, otherwise known as the side of my house.

         Using my finely-tuned powers of observation, I swiftly determined that the sprinkler system had not been abducted by aliens as there were no crop circles carved in my lawn and the PVC pipes and electrical box were free of green slime. Encouraged, I checked each of the four sprinkler zones, flicking the switch from automatic to manual and canvassing the yard in search of blocked sprinkler heads or idle zones. Again, no signs of trouble, other than the fact that I had somehow managed to water myself more than the lawn.

         As I came full circle, I stooped to pull a weed out of the grass when it hit me. No, I don’t mean a light bulb went off in my head. What hit me was a stream of water in the ass. Turns out the big green cap that sits on top of the pipes had a crack in it reminiscent of the Liberty Bell. Investigating further, I found that the technical term for the big green cap was a “hydro-indexing valve,” an item that I had about as much chance of repairing as a heat shield on the space shuttle.

         Two phone calls and $126 later I had a fixed sprinkler system and the satisfaction of knowing I made the right move in hiring someone to do the job. But being repair impaired, it’s never long before another problem around the house puts you face to face with your limitations. In the next two weeks, I paid to have a ficus tree cut down, a garage door opener repaired, and a toilet unclogged.  When a crank handle on one of our old awning windows broke, I vowed to take on the job.

         First, I unscrewed the bolts that hold the crank mechanism to the window frame. Next, I slid the crank arm along the track in the window’s side-mounted hinges. Then, pulling the mechanism away from the window, I inspected the crank handle, arm and gear assembly. Sounds like I knew what I was doing, right? Wrong.

         When I saw the badly bent crank arm, it all came back to me. This was a crank handle that I had installed years ago. The arm didn’t fit the window’s hinge track right so I “modified” it by hitting it repeatedly with a hammer and mangling it to fit. The result is a window that you can only crank closed once before the arm jumps its track and leaves you spinning the handle in vain.

         Knowing I had hit the outskirts of my abilities once again, I did what any self-aware repair impaired man would do. I forced the twisted arm into the hinge, cranked the window closed, packed up my tools and left. Hell, in my book, that’s a successful repair.

         The only thing left to do is lecture my wife. I believe her frequent and frivolous opening and closely of windows may be inflating our energy bills.