Finger Guillotine

Let me say this about that.

Like most retired guys, I am fairly handy around the house when it comes to minor maintenance and repair.  A stuck door here, a leaky faucet there, and we can hold our own.  That is unless you have one of those creatures living in your house like I do.  I forget the scientific name, but around here we call them ….. women.

Having a woman in the house puts a whole new wrinkle on home maintenance, especially when something needs to be fixed in (may God have mercy on our soul) ……  ‘her space’.  And by ‘her space’, I mean in her bathroom – one of the most scary pieces of real estate this side of the Chernobyl nuclear waste dump. 

Much to my horror, the sink stopper mechanism in Mrs. Shambo’s bathroom broke.  She instantly positioned the repair of said fixture to a priority just above the achievement of world peace.  Apparently, the availability of a functioning bathroom sink, is to a woman – as a pork chop is to a ravenous wolf.  I didn’t question the obsession with having a functioning sink in her bathroom – even though there are two others in the house – I just went to fetch my tool box.

I laid out a set of wrenches in front of the sink cabinet to prepare for – maybe – a 15 minute job.  I reached for the cabinet door underneath the sink, and that’s when I heard it.  ‘IT’ was that creepy music you hear in slasher movies when the teenage bimbo, the one with the big hooters, starts to open the closet door in the abandoned neighborhood house where the ax murders took place ….. ‘oooooooooooooo’. 

There, in the cabinet beneath the sink, staring me in the eye and totally blocking my access to the broken plumbing, was a…    secret repository of deadly chemical containers, some dating back to the Kennedy administration.  Little clouds of greenish haze rose above the plastic bottles and aerosol cans bringing tears to my eyes and making it impossible to breathe.

“Must run – can’t breathe – death imminent”

I escaped the bathroom just before I lost consciousness and staggered to the garage.  There, I found the tool I needed to re-enter this toxic no-man’s land – my scuba diving gear and my welding gloves.  I mounted the tanks on my back, donned the mask, and made my way back into the ‘Blasphemous Bathroom of Bellzebub’.  With the air tanks providing life-giving oxygen and the welding gloves preventing the flesh from being eaten from my bones, I gently removed each container from beneath the sink.

As I placed the containers on a piece of plastic I had laid on the floor, I glanced at some of the ingredients in these containers.  I’m pretty sure Saddam Hussein was executed for having some of the same material stashed in a secret warehouse in Karbala in 2006.  Fortunately the United Nations inspectors discovered the cache before any harm was done.

U.N. inspectors:  “Alright Saddam.  Come out with your hands up.  And bring that stash of Shea Butter and Placenta with you.”

Saddam:  “Ah, ha ha ha ha !  Your HAZMAT suits are no match for my herbal essence, my BoTox, or my glucosamine.  Now die, American Infidel !!”

After all the chemical containers had been removed, I discovered that the worst was yet to come.  There they were – the ‘devices’.  I had never seen such instruments outside a forensics lab.  These ‘things’ were probably once used to perform autopsies, but for some reason, were now being stored under my wife’s bathroom sink.  Of all the strange objects I found, the most macabre was a device that had finger holes at one end – like a pair of scissors – and a small guillotine contraption at the other.  It looked like a perfect instrument to cut off a finger tip – or a nose – but I found out later it was called an eyelash curler.

Then, I found the insects.  A match box-sized package containing small creatures that looked like hairy little centipedes.  I gave them a good spray of ‘Aqua Net Super Hold’  which must have dispatched them straight away because they got really stiff – which I chalked up to rigor mortis.  I discovered the following day I had destroyed $80 worth of false eyelashes.

After that experience, I decided to quit bitching about the high price of calling a plumber.  Whatever wage these guys make is not enough.  But tomorrow,  I face an even more grave danger.  Repairing the closet door where ‘They” are stored …….. ‘The Shoes’.

And, that’s all I have to say about that.

Shambo