A Loaded Compliment

I’m a sucker for compliments, but they have to be somewhat based on reality.

Tell me I look pretty today I’ll blush, and bat my eyes knowing full well it’s nonsense.

Tell me I’m “handy,” however, and I’m at your service.

That was the compliment I received recently from the electrical contractor wiring my latest building project. If I could help the electrician, it would save me a few bucks on the job, he said.

“Whatever you need,” I replied, suddenly full of myself without any idea of what lay ahead.

I was flattered. Being referred to as “handy” is among the highest compliments a guy can receive. It meant you’re capable, knew how to do stuff, a good guy to have around.

In this case though, it meant I looked like a guy who knew how to run a shovel and a spud bar.

While the electrician used a trencher to bury the wires connecting the house to the new build, an eight-foot section needed to be dug by hand. This was where a “handy” guy was needed.

Realizing the time to protest was long gone, I picked up the shovel and went to work. The ground was dry and nearly hard as rock. I ended up using the spud bar more than the shovel even though it didn’t bite more than a couple of inches at a time into the hard-packed ground.

The deeper I dug the more difficult it became. I wanted to quit, but accepting the title of “handy,” means you ain’t no quitter.

I kept expecting the electrician to say “let me finish that,” but he never did, treating me instead like just one more guy on the crew.

Like packing out an elk carcass, the work stretched ahead of me in a trail of seemingly endless drudgery.

Hours later, after reaching the proper depth, I was done. Now all this “handy” guy had to do was fill in the recently dug trench.

When the electrician finally called it a day and left, I cracked a beer and collapsed into a lawn chair. My shoulders ached from hours of wielding the spud bar.

I was feeling anything but “handy.”

Don’t be so easy, I told myself.

The next time someone calls me “handy” I’ll try to be smarter, simply blush, bat my eyes, and look puzzled.

“Who me? Handy, No, not at all.”

Parker Heinlein is at [email protected]