At dinner with an event planner and her husband, the topic turned to cars. Sober and disgruntled, I said nothing as our friends discussed a guy who obviously doubted his masculinity and got into working on cars and welding.
A few months later, I must have been in danger of lactating. That can be the only reason I ended up at a friend’s garage, working on his CHAINSAW. Yes, I thought working on car engines was fun, but it turns out parts for chainsaw engines are cheaper, and the things are smaller and easier to pick up. Which probably explains why my Miata engine is still on a dolly in the garage, and the Husqvarna got fixed in a few hours. Also, when you’ve finished, you’ve got something that takes you back to your Evil Dead youth.
Yes, we worked on engines. Yes we googled how to replace the fuel line on a chainsaw, and yes we leaned towards the heterosexual side of amateur lumberjackery. Just to make sure, I swung an axe at a fallen log a few times when we’d finished.
I’ve always been a bit of a loner in the garage since leaving the UK, and the safe haven of my dad’s garage – home to every imaginable tool and piece of hardware. It turns out that in the modern age, it helps to have one person sitting about on a stool, waiting to lend a hand, or to look up a parts diagram, or ask the question about the part that is baffling you. I don’t know we ever used to get anything done – a bunch of generalists working on all manner of fix it projects. Now we can summon the power of a thousand experts who have wrestled with the exact same problem before.
Wielding chainsaws on the shoulders of giants we are.