By Carl Sampson
I don’t know about you but generally speaking, I’m against killing. I think there’s been way too much of it through the years. Students of history know this but I sometimes wonder why other folks haven’t figured that out.
And I’m not just talking about the Middle East. I’m talking about everywhere, including capital punishment. Enough is a enough.
I have a better idea for taking care of the miscreants in our society. Instead of electric chairs, lethal injections or other methods of letting them off the hook, I propose real punishment for anyone convicted of a serious crime. I propose that they be sentenced to do a lifetime of home improvement projects.
Seriously.
I can think of nothing more painful than having to fix a roof or build a fence or patch a hole in a wall. Whenever I am forced to do some sort of home improvement project there inevitably comes a time when I stop and wish someone would put me out of my misery.
Recently, my wife and I decided to save some money and paint our house by ourselves. Ugh.
Painting is not difficult. It’s a matter of taking a brush and putting the paint on the side of the house. It’s only when that involves hanging off a ladder 25 feet in the air that it gets tricky. Or when I finish painting a nearly unreachable part of the house and climb down from the ladder, only to discover a spot I missed 30 feet up. By the time I climb to the top of the ladder again, I am ready to trade in my paint brush forever.
I always figure that people who paint or do carpentry or plumbing for a living like it. I am jealous of them. When it comes to that sort of thing, I am a disaster area.
Earlier this summer, I “refinished” our dining room table. I followed all of the right steps, and got all of the right equipment and supplies. But by the time I was done, I had another “10-foot” project. That means if you look at it from 10 feet away, it looks good. However, if you get any closer, it doesn’t look so hot.
By the time I put the table back together, I decided that all of the little defects I had created were “character.” In fact, that table now has a lot of character.
But it looks better than it did when I started. Twenty-two years had put a lot of dings in the finish, which had completely worn off in some spots.
Now that the table is finished and the house is painted — except for an area we can’t reach even with the tallest ladders — my wife and I are getting out of the home improvement business.
That brings us to the best part of any project.
That’s when my wife and I turn to each other and say, “I like the doneness of it.”
Carl Sampson is a freelance writer and editor. Find his books at www.amazon.com.
