Norm

I want to be Norm Abram. Well, maybe I don't want to be him, I mean I don't want to look like him, or be married to Mrs. Abram (not sure there is one) or swap kids with him. But I want to be able to do the things he does. Who, you ask, is this Norm? He's the host of PBS's New Yankee Workshop, and, in his day gig, is the master carpenter on This Old House, ever since the Bob Villa days. New Yankee Workshop is sort of the Martha Stewart Show for men. Like Martha Stewart, the real purpose of this show, and hers, is to make us feel like inadequate, talentless schmucks. We watch Norm crank out pie safes, and highboys, and Adirondack chairs, and roll top desks from some boards on his shelf, just as Martha nonchalantly whips up a centerpiece made from recycled socks for tonights dinner party of 12, while the Beluga and Shitakke (from her garden) appetizer settles. Yes, the point of these shows isn't to teach us these skills, but to remind us, me specifically, that my gene strand is missing the beads that make such projects possible, even conceivable. I'm just not handy. I delude myself into thinking that with enough time, the right tools, and adequate planning I can actually do the summer projects I've been daydreaming about. Heck, I can enlarge a deck. I can build an outdoor fireplace. Can't I? Well, probably not. I have had some rare successes at handyman, do-it-yourself projects. I added a set of steps to a deck a couple years ago that haven't fallen down yet. It took me most of 5 days, and when they were done, everyone I knew had to come see the newest world-wonder I had built, as if these 3 steps were one of the great pyramids. Norm would have built those steps between breakfast and lunch. He does have the advantage of a workshop equipped with at least 100 grand worth of power tools, many of which I have no idea what they do. I know what a table saw is, but that's about all. It's the place you lay the hammer you used last week, and that triangular shaped measuring thing with hieroglyphics all around it, and the owner's manual to the weed eater. In fact, I often feel like I need a glossary to understand what Norm's talking about. Dado? Biscuits? Joiner? Huh? The realty is, tools or not, these are skills we either have or do not. That old saying, “measure twice, cut once...”....I can measure twelve times, but when I cut it will be too short. When I try to drive a screw with a drill, like Norm, it goes about 2/3rds of the way in, then the bit slips, mauls the screwhead, and I spend 45 minutes getting that screw the rest of the way in, or back out. If I were to glue some boards side to side, then clamp them together to dry, like Norm often does, they could dry for a week and they'd fall apart as soon as the clamps were removed. I recognize my limits. Thankfully, this isn't as sensitive an area as some inadequacies are to males. Thinning hair often leads to comb-overs, and questionable machismo might lead to Harley T-shirts. My Norm envy could lead me to carry a belt sander around, but it hasn't as yet affected my psyche to that point. In fact, I'll probably take on one or both of those summer projects. Next summer, or the following, when they're done, there will be a bus trip to our place to see them. Feel free, then, to call me Norm.