#15 - Ballad of a Lonely Construction Worker

Today after work I helped my dad put the baseboards (that does not look like a real word!) and crown molding (moulding? I'm not sure. I hope it's the former...) in my room. I volunteer for this sort of thing from time to time because it makes me feel incredibly competent and handy.

Normally I find a way to mess these things up in such a way that my father decides within the first ten minutes or so that I am doing more harm than good and asks me to please go do something less destructive. Not this time though! I take this to mean I am improving. Unfortuantely, when I volunteer for these sorts of things I am always sort of counting on being dismissed in short order. After the first fifteen minutes or so I got bored and ended up playing with the little plastic army men on my back deck.

Why are there plastic army men on my back deck you ask? Excellent question. I have no idea. They were there when the snow melted. They come in handy though. Apparently my father often bores the people he enlists with renovations because last weekend my uncle Pat spent a great deal of time arranging them into different battle situations. He particularly enjoyed setting them up so all the regular sized plastic soldiers were being commanded by the single, very tiny, plastic soldier*.

Anyway, the moral of the story is to be careful what you enthusiastically agree to, because you just might not screw it up enough to get out of it. This can lead to a great deal of horrors, including (but not limited to): splinters, sunburns, the transformation of one's back deck into a warzone with tiny plastic bodies strewn everywhere, and repeatedly being referred to as 'Wilbur' by one's father, for no fathomable reason whatsoever.

Consider yourself warned.



*Methinks if Patrick had lived in Europe in early 19th century he would've been something of a Bonapartist.