The Demise of my Big Johnson

July 15, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

I’ve had my Big Johnson for as long as I can remember. It was perfect to me and I’m not sure how I will get along without it. While age brings irreplaceable experience, it also can cause damage and wear. Moving parts are bound to produce friction and friction causes tiny chinks in the mechanism. Eventually, one of those chinks grows into a flaw and since everything in a machine must work together perfectly, too many flaws render it kaput.

Things break, expire, and just flat out stop working as we get older.

And so, my Big Johnson broke. It was a precise instrument of measurement and the best tape measure I’ve ever owned. You could ask me why I loved it and I couldn’t tell you. It fit perfectly in my hand. It just felt right – like a graduated extension of me and that is enough. Anyone who builds stuff understands.

We worked together for years. We built furniture, a playhouse, finished a basement, and numerous other projects. My Big Johnson went to Africa with me and it visited Haiti, too. In fact, I took my Big Johnson wherever I built things. If I had a friend in need, I never had a problem whipping out my Big Johnson to help with home repairs.

Saturday I pulled it out with my lovely wife to measure between pictures we were hanging and it wouldn’t go back in. A spring broke and now it is dead. I don’t think she offered the proper amount of concern for the demise of my Big Johnson.

I feel so utterly incomplete without it.

To add insult to injury, the Johnson Level & Tool Mfg. Company doesn’t make them anymore. Can you believe it? Their new line is called, The Big J… (Insert sigh of disappointment.)

Whoever was the marketing genius who originally named the product must have retired. Try to imagine the board meeting where bell curves showing plummeting sales of tape measures are plastered to the wall. A snickering young executive points out that there might be another connotation to the name causing customer reluctance. I have a mental image of a bunch of gray-haired old men sitting around a long table shocked while this young Johnson brings them up to speed.

I admit that I have the maturity of a 7 year-old. While most contractors and do-it-yourselfers may have giggled and shied away from purchase, the name is precisely why I carried it to the register. How could I know it was a finely crafted instrument that would soon become indispensable to me?

I miss it already. In fact, I will probably make a display case for it and save it for the day when researchers find a way to fix broken springs in tape measures. Kind of like I am cryogenically freezing it until it can be brought to life again.

Until that day, I’ve ordered The Big J. I am thoroughly disappointed yet hopeful that somehow we can work together. It just feels like nothing will be the same again.

I’m a Stripper

July 1, 2015.Reading time 4 minutes.

We all have a past. The question is, do we have a future?

I’ve been telling my lovely wife that we needed to start thinking about how we were going to spend our future together once the children leave. We are getting dangerously close now that JB is almost 15. The last thing I want is to send her to college with no plan for us.

I don’t want to be one of those couples who sits down in the empty nest, looks at each other and has no idea what to say or do. The problem is, we are vastly different people. I like things athletic – not watching them, doing them. I like running, exercising, hiking, and all kinds of outdoorsy things. I love camping! The kind of stuff that makes you sweaty and smelly.

My wife? Not so much. She’s a girly-girl, not given to athletics. She won’t run unless someone in a hockey mask is chasing her. I suggested camping where I could go off and hike a day or two and she could sit and read. No dice, she likes the comfort of her own bed and a clean bathroom.

How did we end up together? She’s a really good girly-girl and I’m a smelly but lucky guy.

Okay, but none of that solves our problem.

We both love to read, but I have yet to figure out a way to make reading a team sport.

Then it happened, quite by accident. An epiphany…

I am an excellent stripper!

Let me share with you just how we figured it out. We bought a desk off of Craigslist a while back and she painted it for JB’s room. Soon after, a few more accessories joined the room including a chair. Unfortunately, all of the new pieces were white, not the freshly-painted ivory color of the desk. Something had to change.

I am reluctant to allow my wife to borrow my tools, because they are the only thing I outright own. They are mine. But she sweet-talked me into my sander which failed to take off the thirteen coats of poly she had applied to the desk.

We needed a stripper.

I prefer making furniture these days. But before I had a shop, I used to refinish old pieces. I hate to be prideful, but I really know how to strip. I even saved some of the really strong solvent from when it was still available. I wondered if it would still be toxic enough to work. I now see why the EPA banned it because even after fifteen years of storage it tore through that poly like a monkey on a cupcake.

* * * * * * * * * *

And so I stripped like nobody’s business. She watched me strip hoping to learn so we could strip together. We talked about all of the stripping we could do once the kids left. I did tell her that we would have to strip for other people because we don’t have room in our home for all of the stripping we plan to do. And now with all of this stripping to look forward to, I’m excited about our future without kids.

(Also, I’m hoping you read the whole post and not just the last paragraph.)