I built something magnificent.
Now I know how Alexandre Eiffel, Frank Lloyd Wright, or I.M. Pei must have felt.
Friends, when you create something beautiful, something the world values, well, it's almost as if you've earned a small chunk of immortality. (Does anyone know if immortality comes in chunks?)
I will now be remembered by generation after generation long after I've left this mortal coil. There will be some small piece of me for people to admire. Maybe in the future people, just average citizens, will spontaneously gather around my creation and marvel at the genius who built it.
Maybe one of those future admirers will even suggest that those assembled enjoy some refreshments, perhaps some hot dogs and hamburgers.
Or a few pieces of barbequed chicken.
That's right. I built a gas grill.
Remember how proud Tom Hanks was in "Castaway" when he built a fire?
Well, now I know how he felt because I have built a grill. I...have built...A GRILL!
By myself.
Without injury.
Maybe "built" is the wrong word. I put the damn thing together following directions that were written in Elvish or some other Middle Earth dialect with diagrams that had to have been drawn by one of the losing participants in an "Even You Can Draw" contest.
Actually, it didn't really matter how poor the diagrams were because they were drawn to such a small scale, the NSA would need a Hubble telescope to read them.
But I was a man on a mission. This gas grill was not about to defeat me. There was too much at stake. Or is it steak?
You may not know this about me, but when I become committed to a project, I can be pretty intense. I once completed a jig saw puzzle that had 130,000 pieces. With no corners. And no picture on the box. And an age recommendation that started with "Postgraduate" and ended with "Nobel Laureate." Granted, at a certain point if the pieces did not fit, I damn well MADE THEM FIT. A Swiss Army Knife, a welding torch, and a pair of needle-nose pliers can work wonders when you need that perfect fit. Ironically, that's exactly how I managed to get into a pair of slim-fit Levis in 1982 but that's a blog for another day.
I approached the grill project methodically. First, I opened the box.
Don't laugh. That was a big step for me. I'm not proud of this but at times I have been known to take on a DIY project of one type or another and then suffer a crisis of confidence when it looked like I might need tools to complete the task. Usually at this point I would put the unopened box aside and tell myself that there would be a better time later. When Ada and I moved to New Hampshire from Hanover, MA, we discovered dozens of unopened boxes in the far reaches of the garage. They all had the same saying printed on the box: "So Easy, a Child Can Do It!"
Not this child.
Well, this time I swore it would be different. Nancy provided some guarded encouragement as I removed the 20,000 or so pieces from the box. "Those look well-made," she offered. "Hey, where are you going?"
"Out," I stammered.
"When will you be back?"
"After you build the grill."
Then I had an epiphany. Millions of people have put gas grills together. Some of those people are even more inept than me. But there they are in their backyards, enjoying a beer, listening to that wonderful sizzle when some form of animal protein makes contact with a red hot grill. To paraphrase Curt Schilling's pronouncement on the eve of the 2004 playoffs, "Why not me?"
So I carefully placed all of the parts on the floor, hunkered down with the ridiculous directions, and methodically started to build this grill. I'm not going to bore you with a play by play account of this undertaking. Let it suffice to say that after some fits and starts, a couple of modest reversals, a late realization that several important pieces were put in backwards or upside down, the grill got built.
I'm thrilled to report there were no left over pieces.
Total cost: $104 (with free delivery)
Total time elapsed: 6 hours and 41 minutes
Time until bone-in ribeye is finished: 3 minutes/side (medium rare)
Ain't life grand?
J
No comments:
Post a Comment