Andy Young: Incompetence pays a dividend

By Andy Young

Like many males of his generation, my father was exceptionally good at working with his hands. Trained as an electrician, he also learned basic carpentry, mechanics, masonry, plumbing, and auto body repair. He could fix anything, so naturally he tried to pass some of his very practical abilities on to his children, starting with his oldest son.

Much to Dad’s disappointment, I wasn’t the most eager or hardworking apprentice. However, I ultimately mastered every skill he had, except those related to electricity, carpentry, mechanics, masonry, plumbing, and auto body repair. Today the only talent I have that he didn’t came courtesy of my maternal grandfather’s DNA. I can change nearly any indoor light bulb without needing a stepladder, something my 5-foot-7 father couldn’t always accomplish.

My failure to pick up any of those valuable skills was as much due to impatience as it was to any innate disability. Then, as now, I enjoyed trying things I quickly excelled at, but if I couldn’t master something instantly frustration kicked in, followed in short order by indifference, disdain, and, depending on how long certain adults insisted I keep trying, deep loathing.

In retrospect, being able to perform what some consider basic tasks would have saved me thousands of dollars over the years. Paying people to keep cars running efficiently, unclog pipes, repair furniture, put up sheetrock and rewire electrical outlets is expensive. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t taken any cruises or invested in any timeshares recently.

Or ever.

But every so often having a limited skill set can come in handy. Late last month my washing machine stopped completing the “spin” part of its job, meaning every load of laundry needed to be wrung out, item by item, and then line dried in the basement, since even a dope like me knows enough not to put dripping clothing into an electric dryer.

Getting a repairman to come diagnose (and subsequently fix) a large home appliance is difficult under normal circumstances, but it’s next to impossible to find one during the holidays. The few potential repairers who responded to my phone calls indicated they wouldn’t be available until the second week of the new year. There would be a significant cost just to have them show up, and the price of parts and labor was likely to dwarf that initial fee. The machine was already elderly when I moved into my current residence nine years ago, so a number of my well-meaning friends suggested I cut my losses and buy a new one. I considered that until I learned what new washing machines cost.

So, I did what comes naturally: nothing. But as my supply of clean clothing dwindled, I realized I needed to take action. I tentatively put in a test load consisting of just washcloths, socks, underwear, and thin t-shirts, all items which could, if necessary, be squeezed out manually and then hung up to dry. But before starting I felt around under the washing machine’s agitator and found two separate sizable wads of dried paper towels, which I hypothesized might have once been wet paper towels that maybe, just maybe, could have messed up my washer’s inner workings. The laundry came out fine, as did the next load, which consisted of heavier items like sheets, towels, jeans, and sweatshirts.

My inability to get anyone to come out and relieve me of several hundred dollars to see if my washing machine was salvageable resulted in the problem resolving itself, saving me lots of money and stress in the process.

It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes, against all odds, ineptitude actually pays off. <

Insight: Delving into the psychic realm

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

During a family visit this week from eldest son and his wife and our two grandchildren, my daughter-in-law Casie mentioned to me a psychic experience that she had back home in Connecticut where she was visited in the middle of the night by what she described as “aliens.”

She went into detail about how the aliens looked, how they were dressed, and how they communicated with her by telepathy. She insists it really happened and it got me to think about several odd things that have happened to me in my life and how I am not quick to dismiss Casie’s experience as the product of her imagination.

Back when my father was struck head-on and killed by a drunk driver while returning from his sister’s house in Florida in May 1991, I was staying with my parents after moving there from New Mexico. I had not lived in their home for more than four months when my father died, and I didn’t know a whole lot about their home.

There was a shower in the bathroom off my mother’s bedroom, but my father never used it because he preferred taking a bath in the bathroom off the hallway. When he would turn on the tub faucet, the pipes in the home were loud and echoed through the walls as water rushed through them. After a while of staying there, I became accustomed to the sound and overlooked it.

Several weeks after my father died in the accident, my mother flew to Ohio to visit friends and to just get away and try to process what had happened. That left me in their home all by myself for several weeks taking care of their dog, a 5-year-old dachshund named Mitzi, who would sleep at the foot of my bed.

On a Saturday night early in June, I stayed up late and watched Saturday Night Live before turning in around 1 a.m. or so. Sometime after I had fallen asleep, something odd happened.

I was awakened in the middle of the night by the dog who had barked twice. She apparently thought that she had heard something in the hallway, and she was listening intently for further sounds. I turned on the light and didn’t see anything and went back to sleep.

About half an hour later, the dog barked again, and I could hear water running through the pipes into the hallway bathroom tub. I got out of bed, walked to the bathroom, and opened the door. Although I could still hear the water in the pipes, the tub was dry, and water wasn’t filling the tub. I went back to bed and when I woke up that morning, I forgot all about it.

The next evening, at about 3 a.m. the exact same thing happened again. The dog barked, I could hear water in the pipes, and it sounded like someone was drawing a bath. This time though when I walked into the bathroom the tub faucet was on and water was filling the tub. I checked the entire house and made sure all the doors were shut and locked and they were. I was all alone there in the house and had not turned on the tub faucet for the bathtub.

When I mentioned the incident to my mother when she got home from her trip, she told me it must have been my father trying to communicate from the other side. I told her that was crazy, and she said the same thing had happened to her a few days after my father’s death. She said she was startled by the dog barking, and she found water running in the tub which she turned off. When she went back to sleep, she said she felt a tap on her shoulder and my father was standing there and he said everything was fine and that he was OK.

My father was skeptical of many psychic things during his life, but he did believe in fortune tellers. Just after I had moved to Florida, he asked me if I had ever heard of this town called Cassadaga. He told me it was a town of mystics and fortune tellers and he wanted to take me there on a Saturday morning to have a fortune teller read my palm. He drove me there and the fortune teller told me I would get married to someone whose name started with the initial “N.” Not knowing anyone with a first name starting with “N,” I didn’t think much of that prediction. But 14 years later, Nancy and I were married, and as it turned out, the fortune teller was correct.

Leaving Cassadaga that day, my father asked what I thought about the fortune teller. When I told him the jury was still out on that, he said he drove me there so I could feel good about myself. I asked if he believed in ghosts and he joked that if he ever came back after dying, he’d want to take a bath first.

I told Casie that I am not going to discount her late-night visitor experience because I’ve experienced my own strange occurrence. <