The Job

I’ve wanted a ceiling fan in my bedroom for well over a year now. I kept holding out, telling myself I would buy one when I knew that family was coming for a visit (read that: suckers!) and could help me hang it. Turns out, they caught drift of this memo and have put off trips to my house until they are certain all household “honey-do” projects are done. I succumbed. I bought a fan on sale a week ago and vowed that LM and I would hang it together. Somehow. With lots of help from the directions.

And I did. I got it out of the box on Sunday morning and started working through it piece by piece. The wiring was already present in the ceiling or I would never have attempted to hang a fan, but that didn’t make the task any less daunting to me. The directions were fairly easy to follow and all the parts seemed to be present. I did have to make a run to Sears hardware for a different screw than the one that came with the fan, however, as the posts that were already in place in my ceiling had a different thread width than the ones that came with the fan. My conversation with the strange old man at Sears went like this:

Me: Hi. I am hanging a ceiling fan and the screws that came with the fan…
Old Sears Guy: we don’t sell ceiling fans anymore.
Me: No, I know, I have the fan. What I need are these screws. See, the ones that came with the fan…
OSG: we don’t sell the fans and we don’t sell the fan parts anymore, either.
Me: No, I know, I don’t need a fan or a fan part. It’s just that these screws…
OSG: Nope, we don’t have the replacement parts for any fan.
Me: I know. You don’t sell fans, and you don’t sell parts for fans, but do you indeed sell SCREWS?!
OSG: why, yes, of course we sell screws…


Yeah, it got worse from there, too. But I did get the screws that I needed and made them work.

LM came in just in time to help with the parts that required three hands. We both balanced on the foot of my bed as I tried to hold 40 pounds above my head with my left hand and position a tiny screw in a tiny hole that I could not see with my right (a task I did not master during my brief stint in the circus. I jest.) There was cursing, there was sweating there were moments when I wanted to throw the fan out the window, but I prevailed.

The entire unit was hung, all pieces were used and it even looks like the picture on the box.

We turned the electricity back on, flipped the light switch, pulled the chains and voila! The fan works. The light, however, does not. The wiring for the fan portion was actually rather involved (read that: I had to call Bear for advice on a couple of the green colored wires). The wiring for the light portion was simple: plug two plug halves together matching the letters and colors on each side of the plug. We did. We double checked. But it doesn’t work. We even tested the bulbs. Fixing the light will have to wait for another day when my patience has been restored.

I learned several things during this process but I will share the most important learning lesson: As a parent, I have failed to teach my child of his Most Important Role when I am tackling household projects: to get me an ice cold Pepsi-Cola in a glass with several cubes of ice.

In the midst of cursing and sweating and fighting back the urge to stomp the fan I realized I.WAS.THIRSTY. As a child, when Dad was in the woodshop or when he was mowing the yard or when he was sleeping through, I mean watching, a baseball game, it was my duty to get him an ice-cold Pepsi-Cola in a glass with several ice cubes. This was MY JOB.

Somehow I have failed to teach this Very.Important.Job to LM. He didn’t know that he was supposed to get me a Pepsi. He didn’t know to put some ice in a glass and bring me a drink. He didn’t know that when I started to use words like “hell” and “damn” that he should calmly go get me a refill and offer me a refreshing drink while I tried to figure out how to hang the blasted fan. It’s what we did growing up. He just didn’t know. Because I had failed to teach him.

Forgive me for overlooking this important lesson, Dad. Before I send LM to your house for a month this summer I will teach him the importance of an ice cold Pepsi. I will teach him that it must be poured in a glass. And that he should not underestimate the amount of ice that is necessary for the job. I will stress the importance of rushing a Pepsi to anyone who is currently swearing or slamming materials or shouting at no one in particular. We will practice until his pouring technique is perfected. I still have several projects to go before summer. He might not get it mastered when I try to fix the vertical blinds that will.not.turn. But surely by the time we get to painting the stairwell he will have the skill mastered and will be better prepared for his time at your house!

Next in the series of Life Lessons to Teach Your Children (according to my dad) will be: How to Easily Manage Everyday Tasks with the Use of One Notecard in Your Front Shirt Pocket.

Stay Tuned!