Mechanical Failure

Once upon a time, I had a college roomie from India who was amazed that I knew how to operate a washer and dryer, remove and clean a sink trap, and fix a constantly running commode. She grew up with house servants who did all these things for her, whereas I grew up a poor white kid in the Midwest whose only notion of servants came from fairy tales. When I taught her -- mouth agape -- how to measure detergent and operate the knobs and the coin slide on one of the Maytags in the laundry room, I felt like some kind of mechanical god.

And that, my friends, is as far as it ever went.

Just like my friend over at The Clerical Error, I am slowly becoming domesticated. Not because I own a house and have a husband and three kids, but because I'm exactly the opposite: I live in a tiny apartment alone, and I can't stand most of the maintenance men around here. They don't understand the concept of privacy too well: it does no good to stand outside the door and holler "Maintenance!" while simultaneously opening it. Defeats the purpose of announcing yourself. And so, when something goes awry, I have started having a go at righting it myself. This usually means doing everything short of blowing it up and then asking for help anyway, but hey, I'm getting there. I think.

Given disability, there are certain things I cannot do: change the bulbs in the ceiling lights, for instance. I have my Dad for this. He's tall. He also does anything requiring a power drill, because I refuse to own one. I'd kill myself with it. There'd be a headline in The Express: "Local Woman Dies of Blood Loss Following Tragic Drill Accident." And underneath: "Tried to Reattach a Towel Bar." But I can patch drywall now, and change a toilet pump, and caulk a tub. So maybe you're thinking I sound pretty mechanically astute, right?

Wrong.

There was one day not too many years ago when I tried to change out a phone jack and ended up curled on the couch with a bottle of Fisheye, weeping like a small child. I'm about to fix the curtain rod in my living room with duct tape. Just this week I attempted what should have been a simple fix to my Internet connection, and somehow ended up setting my computer's firewall to block my wireless signal. I spent three days sans Internet before I finally broke down and called tech support. The guy on the other end had to mute his line a few times -- he was laughing, I suspect. And today -- today I discovered that air conditioning units have filters.

I know, right? Astounding. I was aghast.

My AC isn't set into the window properly (not my fault; the Housing Authority put it in), so every so often water collects inside the unit and turns to ice, which then gets caught up in whatever makes the air conditioner actually blow air. The result is usually that it blows out the vent like some improvised weapon of war: "Domestic Missiles! Now With Freon! Get Yours Today!" Occasionally, though, the ice stays stuck and the AC screams like a dying animal.  I usually  solve this problem by simply turning the unit off and waiting for the ice to melt, thereby propagating a viscous cycle. (There should be a sign on my door: "Watch for Flying Projectiles.") Today, I decided against this and actually went to knock the ice out of the unit myself. When I couldn't dislodge it after pounding on it a few times, I took off the front to peer inside and voila! a filter.

It. Was. Disgusting.

I guess this is to be expected, since I didn't know it existed for 2 years. I gazed at it stupidly for a moment, and then the light bulb in my head finally came on: "Oh. This is like a lint trap in a dryer." I cleaned it, feeling kind of like the first Astrolopithicus Aferensis to ever stand on his buddy's shoulders to reach a piece of fruit: brilliant, but stupid. Very, very stupid. All I could think was, "How could I survive to the age of 27 and not have figured this out?!"

And now I'm preoccupied with the idea that there are other simple mechanical things like this that I don't know, that are just waiting to pop up and present me with my very own Darwin Award. I'm stalking my appliances, giving them the eyeball. They're up to something; I know they are.

It's a conspiracy.