I Need Help

Ever since the golden days of the Women's Liberation Movement, all any American male has had drummed into his head for the last few decades is that a woman can do anything a man can do. Great, I wouldn't mind a little help around the house. After all I've been washing dishes and mopping floors since I was I kid. I even bake my own apple pies when I can't get someone else to make them for me. So why is it that I can't get anyone of the female persuasion to help me when I really need it? Like working on cars.

When I was a handsome young man, my newly won wife, my adored bride, would follow me to the ends of the earth. Or so I thought at the time. It might have been that she mistakenly believed there was actually money in the large trucker's wallet chained to my belt. At any rate, she actually followed me when I went to work on the car. From changing oil, to changing brake pads, my sweetie was always there to hand me tools pass me a glass of water and provide the occasional bologna sandwich with mustard. Gradually, though, the thrill of handling gleaming metal sockets, wrenches, crystal canisters of water and preserved meat on bread lost it's subtle charm.

My beloved soon found excuses to do other much less important work, like keeping house, going out with the girls and yes, raising the darling babies that would be known as Colt and Erica. My car repairs became a lonely and toilsome chore. It's hard to crawl all the way out from under a car every stupid time you need a different socket because you got the wrong size the first time. You can only rope in friends, neighbors and relatives to help with car work just so many times before you get a bad reputation. It got so bad, even Jehovah's Witnesses wouldn't come by for fear of getting their shirts dirty. Then the babies grew to wrench carrying size.

Colt , the eldest, was soon promoted to "daddy's helper" status by his own mother, of all people. At least that's what she told him. What she told me was something like, "I gave you a male heir and I'm never carrying your tools again. Period." The boy did an admirable job of passing tools, and even learned to do some heavy lifting as the years went by. My heart was choked with pride, especially when he learned to haul two or three assorted toolboxes to the car to avoid having to run back to the house for needed and missing tools. Then Colt discovered females and all his spare time was consumed with them, and later by his work, leaving little time to help dear old Dad. Guess who changes his oil and brakes most of the time now? Me.

I tried to shanghai Erica into taking her brother's place on what I laughingly referred to as the assembly line, as by now there were multiple cars and the occasional truck to maintain. After a marathon oil changing session, where she and I changed oil on all our vehicles in record time, she inexplicably lost interest in such things. I won't even mention what she said when I asked her about helping with a brake job. Some things between a father and daughter should never be revealed in print. Or pixels.