Thursday, March 21, 2013

In a bygone era of this blog, posts were produced at a prodigious, almost obsessive pace, and I felt duty-bound to furnish you with words on the promised days. Missing a day would bring about a deep, abiding sense of guilt, followed by furtive assembly of backdated posts–a dishonest exercise, to be sure, and also ridiculous to think I actually had the drive to do so. This makes it all the more ironic that Tuesday’s post–or lack thereof–was a genuine malfunction on my part, the first ever such mistake in our history. I hit the “save” button instead of “publish.” Honest! Honest. I only wish I had the wherewithal to backpost these days.

Tuesday’s up now, something about pool or the like, but I don’t want to talk about that tonight. Instead, I want to talk about things breaking. I know nothing lasts forever, but it’s one of those truisms I shunt to the back of my head until absolutely needed. I’ve been reminded of this fact more and more recently–looking at the odometer every morning, for instance, or the peeling rubber around my rearview window. The small surface crack in the tub. The kitchen sink handle that loosens on its own accord and drips water.

All these things point to the inexorable march of time. YouTube has become the de facto repository of how-to knowledge, and so I dutifully fired up a video on how to tighten single Moen kitchen handles, part one. I couldn’t even finish the clip. Stopped right around the time the presenter laid out all the tools the project would need. That’s because I knew exactly what course of action I’d take: nothing. You remember how in old cartoons, a pilot would fly so vigorously that the flight stick would break? And then, all the pilot had to do was jam the stick back into the console to right the plane again? That’s how I’ve been prolonging the life of my kitchen sink handle, in effect, twisting its base until it feels new, again and again, cataclysm inching ever closer with each clockwise turn.