It was early in my marriage when I asked Wifesicle if she would fix a split seam in my pants. She smiled, said “of course” and left to get her sewing kit. (Back in those unenlightened days I had simply assumed all women were issued a kit when they turned 12 and had genetic knowledge of its many uses.)
As I contemplated how fortunate it was that at least one of us could sew, she returned holding my pants in one hand and a stapler in the other.
“I suggest protective underwear when you wear these pants,” she said lovingly.
It was at that moment I discovered that the fine art of sewing did not exist…at all…in our new family.
I had only a thimbleful of previous confrontations with sewing.
In college, bereft of a girlfriend (well, any friend), I tried to sew a button on a shirt. After losing several ounces of blood I finally attached the button. I admired my handiwork for eight seconds, the amount of time it took the button to fall to the floor and roll under the radiator, never to be seen again.
Another time was when I helped my sister remove her sewing machine from the trunk of my car and pulled a back muscle. At that moment I retired from competitive sewing. (Unfortunately, by the time I married, my sister had traded her sewing machine for a case of cheap wine.)
But sewing reared its ugly head years later when Girlsicle joined the Brownies and we realized there was no Hogwarts spell that would attach to her sash all those merit badges she was expected to earn. We suggested strongly to her that while earning merit badges was good, displaying them on the sash was akin to worshipping heathen idols. Oddly enough, this appealed to her.
Next we tried to bribe her, but gave up when she hired Scott Boros to negotiate the terms, including seeking free agency at age 15.
So there she went, earning badges for such skills as grilling cheese sandwiches with an iron and learning how to pee in the woods while keeping her socks dry (my memory may be hazy on the details). To our dismay, she neither tried for nor earned a badge for sewing. We blamed “The Real Housewives” reality shows, because, why not?
We did try glue, but that never lasted for more than one campfire. And double-sided tape may have held Jennifer Lopez and her Grammy’s dress together, but it didn’t have the longevity for our purposes.
Once I thought that sewing was rather like touch typing (now known by the PC word “keyboarding”) or riding a bike. It looks impossible until you learn how to do it. I have studied a sewing machine for minutes, however, and cannot figure out how it can push thread in one side of the fabric and pull it back from the other side without ripping the garment to shreds. It defies the laws of nature and is likely related to witchcraft. I avoid witchcraft as a general rule unless it comes with fries.
As a young man about town I could play helpless and ask a kind-looking woman to mend rips or attach buttons. Now when I ask a woman if she will mend my ripped crotch, she threatens to call the police and walks quickly away, giving me a mean over-the-shoulder scowl. People are just so selfish these days.
So that leaves me with three choices.
- Go to a professional, which these days means a visit to the dry cleaner. Somehow I find it unrealistic that the same people who rend my shirts can somehow mend them.
- Make a serious attempt to learn how to sew. (File that under “old dogs and new tricks.”)
- Ditch the damaged goods and buy a replacement. It’s easy on the nerves, good for the world economy (“cloth made in Honduras, assembled in Guatemala, inspected in China, and sold at Walmart”), and, most important, it saves wear and tear on the stapler.
©2015 Jeffsicle. Feel free to share with friends. Sign up at Jeffsicle.wordpress.com or follow the adventures of Jeffsicle on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jeffsicleblog or on Twitter at @Jeffsicle. “As God is my witness, I’ll never go a month between posts again.” — Jeffsicle O’Hara.
Jeffsicle 