F**k It: I’m Calling Someone

It’s happening again. Something is wrong with the heating in my living room. The electrical breaker keeps tripping when I turn up the thermostat. A normal person would just call an electrician and wait, but I’m not like that.

I grew up in a working-class family where if something broke, you fixed it yourself. Simple as that. Not fixing something yourself had all sorts of implications, none of them positive. You were uppity, thought you were above getting your hands dirty. You were incompetent and probably worked behind a desk. That was the ultimate insult in my family, being someone who worked at a desk. Somehow digging ditches was more respectable than sitting behind a desk even though no one in my family going back to the beginning of time actually knew what people who worked at desks actually did, other than it must be something with paper. And words.

Growing up, I watched my father fix things no rational person should attempt to do on his own. He replaced the rear axle on my first car. By himself. He and my brother put new engines in cars. Several times.

And while my father readily admitted he wasn’t a carpenter, he build a garage. By himself. He joked that it was actually a shed because a garage was something that a real carpenter built. He was right. His garage/shed was hideous, a nightmare of ignorance regarding how to build something. It was misshapen and badly proportioned and not pleasing to look at, but rather than trying to hide his work, he painted it red. Each time the wind came up I was sure it would come falling down like in The Three Little Pigs, but it never did. It would still be standing except the people who bought the house after my parents retired and moved quickly realized the quickest way to improve their property value was to raze my father’s shed. No garage was better than his garage.

My garage, which I most definitely didn’t build myself, looks like the garage of a guy who can and does fix things. I have an amazing array of hand and power tools I’ve accumulated over the years. I have a drill press for crying out loud. A floor jack. The only problem is I’m incapable of actually fixing anything. When I was younger, I held a variety of jobs, gas station attendant, roofer, plumber’s helper, carpenter’s assistant, that might imply I could take things from the state of broken to fixed. And occasionally, I actually managed to do so. But those achievements were short-lived and rarely reproducible.

Now that I’m older, perhaps it’s poorer vision, a failing of hand/eye coordination, a general impatience with the whole process, I can pretty much guarantee that any attempt I make to fix something will end badly, and cost me more than if I’d just called a professional in the first place. But if I call somebody, I might as well put on a sandwich sign: I’m a Pussy.

Back to my electrical issue. I broke down and called an electrician. They can’t come until tomorrow. I should just patiently wait, wearing a sweater while I’m in the living room. But I’m already checking out the Home Depot website, figuring out what I need to buy, and searching YouTube for instructions on how to install it.

I’ve been down this road before, even with the same electrician. Last spring, I decided I’d install a new thermostat. While terrified of electricity, I thought I knew enough to attempt it safely. I’d done my research and after two tries bought the right thermostat at Home Depot. I’d watched videos on YouTube that convinced me it was a cinch.

I turned off the power and started my work. I decided to use my iPhone to take a picture of the wiring on the existing thermostat. Then I figured it was a simple matter of connecting the new thermostat like the old. A brilliant idea I anticipated sharing with folks in the future.

I managed to get the old thermostat out, take off the wires, and connect the new thermostat up to the wires just like it showed in my iPhone photograph. I double checked my work. I was deeply pleased as I stuffed those wires back into the box, installed the thermostat onto the box, and put on the cover. A job well-done.

I walked outside and flipped on the breaker for the circuit I’d been working on. It immediately clicked off. I tried it again. Again the breaker clicked off.

Now the familiar feeling of panic and remorse. I’d spent money at Home Depot, spend an inordinate amount of time on the project, believing that would magically increase my likelihood for success, it was getting late in the afternoon, and I’d failed yet again.

My panic adrenaline kicked in and I called the electrician, talking quickly, trying to laugh it off, explaining what I’d done and practically begging him to come over as soon as possible because it was getting late and I didn’t have heat. Not surprisingly, he chuckled.

The electrician and his assistant came over before quitting time. I told him again what I’d done, how I’d taken a photograph. He explained that while it was reasonable to believe that would work, they (whoever that was) had changed blah, blah, blah, like that Gary Larson cartoon about what your dog understands when you talk to him.

Three minutes. Sixty-five dollars, their minimum for a call. But the thermostat works and is still working. Had I called him to begin with, I would have paid that amount plus whatever it cost for the thermostat, perhaps a bit higher, but not much, than Home Depot and probably a better thermostat. Plus he and his sidekick would have done all the work, pulled and twisted the wires. I would have got more for my money at least.

I think I can hold out until tomorrow, resist the urge to jump into the latest project. It seems so straightforward. It’s just a matter of disconnecting this and reconnecting that, but I know that is doomed thinking.

UPDATE

The electrician said he’d be over “first thing in the morning” and would call before he came. I figured that meant around eight a.m. He called me at 6:45 and said he’d before over in fifteen minutes.

He was the same guy who came to save me from my previous thermostat installation debacle, said he remembered coming up here. After using a meter to check the thermostat and the individual wall units, he asked to take a look at the breaker panel.

For me that’s the really scary area of electricity in the home: The Panel where the power comes in and is distributed throughout the house. I always approach it with great caution, stepping gingerly, fearful I’ll inadvertently touch something and EMT’s will just find my remains, a pile of smoking ashes.

So I was more than a little nervous as the electrician opened the panels, took off their protective covers, and started poking around inside with his insulated screwdriver. As I always do when someone comes to the house to fix things, I peppered him with questions about the inner workings of the panel, hoping to gain some slight insight I could use in the future.

He fiddled and tightened screws, hmmmed to himself, put on his tester as I stood by anxiously awaiting his diagnosis. At last he revealed it: the breaker for that circuit was going bad, slowly pulling too much power which caused it to eventually kick off.

He headed back to his shop to retrieve a new breaker, came back, opened the panel and replaced it with a snap.

Had I followed my instincts I would have gone to Home Depot, purchased a new wall unit and with a bit of luck installed that. I would have turned it on, proud once again at my home repair expertise.

And I would have been wrong. I would have swore and then panicked, calling the electrician again, pleading that he come as soon as possible.

The lesson from all of this is simple. I just don’t know if I’ll really take it to heart this time. I certainly haven’t thus far in my life.