I’m standing in my home office. It is buried in pink insulation – the aftermath of one more home improvement project gone wrong.
I should explain.
My wife and I had a bright idea. Our house is 60 years old, so we thought it would make sense to put more insulation in the attic. Save on heating bills and
all that.
We rented one of those blowers and bought a batch of that pink insulation. For those who have not had the pleasure, the insulation comes in plastic bales. You cut them in half and jam them in the blower, which shoots the insulation through a hose into the attic.
Easy-peasy.
We watched a couple of videos on how to do it and got everything set up. The blower and I were in the garage, and my wife was in the attic.
Then things went wrong. Very wrong. The hose, which had two 50-foot sections, came apart, spewing insulation all over my office. In our defense, we had taped the sections together but the tape obviously wasn’t up to the job.
So there I was jamming insulation into the blower and shooting it through the hose into my office, and my wife wondering why she wasn’t getting any insulation in the attic. She checked out the hose, and my office had been decorated in a foot of Barbie-pink snow. She ran down and told me what was going on and I hit the “off” button.
I have to admit, I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time – since the last home improvement project I got involved in. There’s no limit to the number of ways I can screw up home improvement projects. Paint spills, crooked fences – you name it.
It’s not that I’m an idiot – I think – it’s just that, in my heart of hearts, I consider home improvement projects to be punishment. Torture might be a better word.
Which brings me to a book I have been reading. In it was a profile of a lawyer who travels around the nation trying to keep the worst criminals off death row. Her clients are a rogue’s gallery of bad guys. Child rapists, murderers, bombers – the lowest of the low. And there she is trying to get a jury to have sympathy for these guys. One of her clients was the guy who, with his brother, set off a bomb near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Her defense of his actions boiled down to: his big brother made him do it.
I had a big brother, so I know how that works. But I will guarantee you that big brothers cannot make a little brother slaughter three innocent people, kill a cop and maim 264 others without the little brother’s agreement.
So this lawyer was trying to keep junior out of the electric chair.
Let me just say that I’m not a big fan of capital punishment, for any number of reasons. But the main reason is it’s too easy on the bad guys. I really, truly want them to live a long and horrible life and think every day about what they did.
To accomplish that, I suggest they be sentenced to do home improvement projects, which I admit is cruel and unusual. Painting, hammering – blowing insulation! – day after day and year after year will make them wish they had stayed out of trouble.
I will stipulate that some people actually like home improvement projects. Maybe we can find something else horrific for them to do. I suggest making them listen to politicians 24/7. That would be enough to make anyone beg for mercy.
Carl Sampson is a freelance writer and editor. He lives in Stayton.
