Holes

“Ok. More to the left. Little more. Little more. Now go up two inches. There! Put the nail there.”

We were hanging pictures in the living room at my mom’s house, and she was sitting on the other side of the room directing me.

I take a nail, tap it into the sheetrock wall and hang the frame.

“Hmmm. It doesn’t look right. It needs to go up another inch.”

“Aarg, frakin, flip!” My blood pressure is climbing, and my right eye is twitching uncontrollably again.

“You know, every wrong hole I knock in the wall is another one I will have to fix later,” I groused.

Is there any good thing that comes from holes?

Think about it: potholes, a hole in the boat, mole holes, ozone holes, tooth cavities, a hole in the roof. There is no good that can come from a hole!

Whenever I hear the word hole, it is assumed that I will, “Fix it or get it fixed.” Look up the word hole in the dictionary. It is defined as: something you repair.

In Marty World, you would build your house, sheetrock, and paint the interior, move all the belongings inside and then decide where the wall hangings go. You will tap in one nail for each picture and mirror and permanently mount any heavier shelves. You would then, never, ever again move or change the look of the interior. In other words, you will get it right the first time.

But that’s not the way women see it. The house must change with the season. They move pictures and they move shelves.

Oh yeah, I love it when the big things get moved that were screwed to the wall by inserting the plastic drywall anchors. What are you going to do with a hole like that? After you pull the plastic piece out of the wall, you have a ½” to 3/4″ hole to fill and paint over. This is not some insignificant repair. I may have to think about that repair for days.

Last Thanksgiving, the congregation stayed after church to decorate the building for the four weeks of Christmas. In the lobby there are four, square, floor to ceiling, sheetrocked support posts. The high school group thought it would be nice to wrap cedar bows around them like a barber pole. They used a commercial stapler from top to bottom to hold them there. The weekend after New Year’s when it all comes down, the four painted posts were peppered with staple holes. It took me three hours to refill the holes, sand and repaint them. This year during the decorating I stood in the lobby and threatened, “Don’t even get close to these posts!”

The church has a large game room in the basement for the youth. The walls are sheetrocked but covered with carpet. For some reason the kids think it’s fun to slam into the walls or kick them which punches in the sheet rock. I must admit that I might take pleasure tossing one of those kids into the wall just so they understand that those holes are one more thing for me to fix.

Because of holes, rodents get in my crawl space and birds get in my attic. Because of holes, I rolled my ankle in the back yard because the cows jumped the fence during the wet season and were aerating my lawn with their hooves. Because of holes, my wheelbarrow tire is flat.

Sure, there is the exception: when I create the hole on my terms such as digging a pit to trap a tiger, sinking a fence post or pre-drilling for a screw. But most times, I tend to put the hole in the wrong spot and must fill it and try again.

Nope, as I sit here thinking about it, there is very little that a hole is good for. As a matter of fact, staring at my socks, my right big toe is sticking through on one, and my left heel is hanging out of the other.

Humph! Holes.

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