Guest Post: Da Baby Daddy

At the request of my girl, there is a little story I have been asked to share with you all. This is apparently the first of two entries I will be helping out with over the next couple of weeks. Momma has requested that I give a six month update of our boy from dad’s perspective so that is in process and will be posted before too long. But for now, here is a little ditty about last night and how I discovered that technology and manhood do in fact coexist.

Each night before I head upstairs to go to sleep I have a routine of making the rounds to turn everything off, lock the doors, and let Koda out. Last night during my evening ritual I noticed that the sink was not draining as it normally would. And by not draining like it normally would I mean had standing water in it. There seemed to be something different about it this time though. For those of you who have ever dealt with a clogged drain you know that everything you have stuck down there for the past 3 weeks seems to come back up and turns the water a nice pretty army green color that emits a wonderfully pungent odor. In spite of the disgusting nature of the clog it is an easy fix. One cap Drano, 15 minutes of whistling the Drano jingle, then 30 seconds to rinse anything left behind after the clog goes away. But this time it was different. There was clear standing water without the drain being plugged. I had never seen this before so I immediately thought two things: a) I get to use the disposal... whoo hoo; and b) since I get to use the disposal I get to see a water twister in the sink... whoo hoo. I walked over, flipped the switch and heard nothing but an odd buzzing sound. While it buzzed I did what any red-blooded American male would do, I watched the water and waited for something different to happen. To my dismay, there was no draining, no water twister. Disappointment kicked in. Then cave man kicked in. I all of the sudden remembered how to fix things that were broken. Turn it off. Turn it on. Same buzzing, only this time it stopped after about 7 seconds, then silence. By this point I actually believe this is working so there was just one last thing to do. Turn it off. Turn it on. This time nothing, just silence. Perfect.


I then proceeded to think about everything that had gone down there over the last few days. Unfortunately I could not think of anything that would be detrimental to the disposal or easy to remove so I did the next best thing. I asked Kate to come down and started asking her what she had done to it. As evidenced by the stupidity, I am still on the junior varsity husband team, with a goal of one day making varsity. That being the case I am going to pass along this little nugget of wisdom to the fellas out there. Skip this step. It is dark territory. Not to mention when you start pointing out things like, "you are the only one that uses this, it had to be something you put down there," you get responses like "you are the one that has used the disposal the last three times we have used it." Funny how memories are fuzzy until the moment where she pounces like a lioness catching prey for her cubs.... anyway, I digress.


Next I showed Katie where all the information was for the repairman, the type and power of the disposal and walked upstairs defeated that I was going to have to spend $150 to $200 to fix the disposal. Then cave man 2011 kicked in. YouTube. So I picked up the iPad, clicked the YouTube app and searched price to fix disposal... since I am an accountant by trade the first thought that entered my mind was not "maybe there is a "how to" video on how to fix it," but instead it was "maybe I can use this to verify that my price estimate is accurate." Although it was an analytically sound approach, it seemed to lack the do-it-yourself man power I hoped I would have had. As I came across a 10 second video of a guy whose only words were "If you pay more than $200 you are a f$(@ing idiot" I realized that my estimate was spot on... and that this guy needed Jesus... yes, in that order. After repenting, I moved on. As I was about to put my iPad up I had another thought... maybe this genius thing would have a video on how to fix the disposal. Enter next 3 minute video. Coincidentally, the opening screen was a blue background with big white letters that simply said, "you can fix it yourself, you don't need to get f#*%ed." This time I realized that I needed to pray first and then finish watching. After praying that this would not be a complete waste of time I pressed play. He opened the presentation with the words, "today I'm going to continue my series on showing you how to fix things yourself." I was feeling pretty good about the direction this was heading. He continued, "today's episode is going to tackle garbage disposals. This little trick will show you how to solve 90% of your garbage disposal problems." Analytical me was extremely excited about my odds.


After a few more casually dropped f-bombs he showed me a red button that resets the disposal. Of course my only option at this point is to press pause and search for the red button. I quickly find the red button, reset the disposal, proudly stand up, flip the switch, and stand there as it proceeded to not make a single sound. Strike one. Press play again. The video proceeds. My next possibility was to use a 5/16" hex wrench and stick it in a little hole on the bottom of the disposal and "give it a couple of turns back and forth." So after Google imaging hex wrench I realized, "I have those, this might work." I went to the garage grabbed the hex wrench set, pulled out the 5/16”and whatdoyouknow, it didn't fit. Of course. Strike two.


By this time Katie had come down to help out and I knew that one way or another I had to show her that I could fix the disposal. I didn't want her last thought of me before she went to sleep to be, "he had to Google hex wrench. How is he going to raise our son?" After that I was determined to prove to her that I was man. And man fix garbage disposal. Man fix garbage disposal good. Then man proceed directly upstairs to teach son what hex wrench is. So I proceeded to start at what I thought the right size was and work my way up until we got to the 7/32". For those of you keeping score at home, if I had gone down from the 5/16" instead of starting from the bottom and working my way back I would have had to try like 8 less wrenches. since 7/32" comes immediately after 5/16". I pulled the 7/32" hex wrench out of my holster and it locked into place. I almost wet myself I was so excited. I gave the thing a couple of turns, heard some stuff flipping around in there then thought now what? Cave man kicked in. Turn it on. The roar of the garbage disposal spinning to life was all I needed to hear. I proudly looked at Katie. She looked back at me as if to say, "you are wonderful, you are going to be a great father to our son, and I forgive you for blaming me for this ten minutes ago." It was done. I was proud of myself and analytical me was thrilled with the aforementioned cost savings that had previously been verified. With two strikes I just hit a walk-off home run.

I was forever indebted to these two strangers who now felt like long lost friends. To repay them, I did what any friend in a 2011 social media relationship would do. I “liked” their videos and went to bed. Thank you, YouTube.