First sign of a handyman: He keeps his mouth shut

As the old philosopher once said, if the women don’t find you handsome, they’d better find you handy.

Great. Now my situation looks hopeless on all fronts.

I tried a couple of weekends ago to prove how handy I was. I embarked on the installation of a skylight. In a fit of manly arrogance, I actually uttered these fateful words to my wife: “Piece of cake. It’ll take 10 minutes.”

If there are stupider words in the English language, I’ve never said them.

Actually, the words I uttered a month earlier, when I ordered my custom-made skylight, were not much brighter.

The words I said were: “Make it 34 inches by 34 inches.”

This helps to explain the scenario that occurred on my roof, approximately 30 minutes after uttering that imbecilic “ten-minute” crack.

I had pried the old skylight off, only shattering it slightly in the process. I had the new skylight sitting next to the gaping hole in my roof, ready for easy installation. The new skylight measured, as you will recall, 34 by 34. The gaping hole in my roof measured 36 by 36.

As I stared at my tape measure, the first peal of thunder boomed overhead.

The rest of the weekend is a blur. I have a vague recollection of wanting to blame the store for delivering the wrong size skylight. I remember angrily hunting down the order slip and muttering invective at the store’s incompetence, until I realized that they had delivered the correct size of skylight. I had simply delivered the wrong size hole.

Then I have a fuzzy memory of planning an excursion to the store and seeing if they would just exchange my skylight for a slightly bigger one, the way Macy’s will let you exchange a pair of Dockers for a relaxed-fit pair.

Then I realized that the store actually has no aisle of ready-made skylights. They just have order forms you fill out. A month later, you get a skylight.

I could not wait a month for a new skylight. I had a hole in the roof of my bedroom. Do you have any idea how soggy a mattress can get in a month? Forget about a month. Lightning bolts were crackling closer and closer. My mattress would be sopping in about a half-hour.

I took decisive action. I nailed a hunk of plywood over the hole.

When I came down off the roof, my wife looked at her watch, possibly a little too ostentatiously, and raised her eyebrows.

“Not quite finished yet,” I said. Then I opened up a beer.

I decided to get a good night’s sleep – as good as you can get while staring up at a swath of leaky plywood – and deal with the situation in the morning. The next day, refreshed, I came up with a brilliant plan. I would get my neighbor to climb up on the roof and tell me what to do. He is actually handy.

We, by which I mean “he,” came up with a clever solution. He hauled his circular saw onto my roof and proceeded to shave an inch all the way around the “curb” that lines the hole. After a couple of hours and sawing and chiseling, the curb was now 2 inches narrower in both dimensions. After only another three hours of drilling, pounding and lacerating ourselves with sheet metal, the skylight was installed.

It works perfectly. It does not leak, at least not all that much.

In the ensuing weeks, I have pondered where I went wrong in this entire debacle. Should I have measured the hole more carefully? No. Guessing is always a good idea.

Should I have returned the skylight and waited for one the correct size? No. It cost $400, it was nonrefundable, and it would have been tantamount to admitting error.

My big mistake was obvious. I should never have uttered the words, “Piece of cake. It’ll take ten minutes.”

No good has ever come of those words. God waits for men to say that. Then He laughs and strikes them down.

That certainly explains the lightning.