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MORRIS TO THE RESCUE. AGAIN.

By now, most of you know Morris.

Morris is my home improvement go-to guy. When I have thoroughly botched a home improvement project, Morris is the one I call to get me out of trouble.

Morris is the one who comes and assesses the situation and immediately identifies the problem and the solution. ("Well, here’s the problem – you. Solution – go sit over there and stay out of my way.")

So you can imagine my concern when, during one particularly difficult project, Morris turned to me and offered the following solution: "We could build a time machine and go back in time and never start this project."

It all started when my wife decided that I needed to replace part of one of our door frames at the house. Apparently, there was a little bit of dry rot, and where I saw character, my wife saw potential house collapse. She’s so picky like that.

Although I figured the project was doable, I went ahead and called Morris before starting. I have learned to identify which projects require a Morris chaperone, ever since that unfortunate incident I refer to as "The Electric Shock from the Light Socket that Knocked Me Off the Ladder."

Morris and I sized up our work, and decided that we would merely need to pop the suspect board off of the frame, slap a new board in place, add a coat of paint and boom – it’s Miller time!

How sadly wrong we were. As we went to pry the board out, we noticed that it was sure putting up some resistance. Must have used extra glue on this one, we thought. After wedging the claw of a hammer deep behind the board, we gave one spirited yank and found out that the reason the wood was not coming out quite so easily was that this was not a small 1 X 4 board that was attached at the surface. Nosirree, this was a veritable plank, and it went deep back into the door frame and, I’m pretty sure, all the way to the other side of the county.

We had trod far enough down the path that we had cleared out several chunks of wood so far, so we couldn’t just stop what we were doing. We sized up the situation, and I gotta tell you – it looked bleak. To recap: chunks of the door frame were littered at our feet, the board we thought would come out easily was well entrenched in the house’s foundation, and the bulk of the dry rot was still sitting there, taunting us.

Oh, and there’s one other piece of info I should share – my wife had run some errands, and was due back any minute now. It was upon this realization that Morris came up with what is a can’t miss bestseller: "How To Fix Things Before Your Wife Gets Home and Realizes What You Did."

Just when things looked their darkest, however, inspiration struck. Morris remembered that I had a jigsaw. "Why on earth would we want to put together a puzzle right now?" I asked incredulously. This is why Morris takes the lead in these matters.

Morris took the jigsaw and cut away enough of the board that we could add in our replacement board, and secured the board in place. He even used the term "counter sink," which sure sounds like he knew what he was doing. Granted, he could have been describing items in my bathroom.

After a few minutes of craftsmanship, Morris had developed a new path for this particular home repair, and in no time I was painting the door frame and admiring the like-new quality. (My wife and Morris have decided that they can allow me to paint, as there is little chance for harm there.)

And, you will be pleased to know that we did indeed finish up the job before my wife got home. Granted, I’ve kinda spilled the beans here, but the bottom line is the door is fixed, right? It’s also good to know that we didn’t have to try and build a time machine, because I’m fairly sure that I would have figured out how to lop off a finger or shock myself or transport myself back to the time of dinosaurs and get eaten or something like that.

So, once again, it’s the tried and true story: Boy tries home repair, boy calls Morris, Morris figures out how to do it right. While Morris is indeed a very good friend for all of the assistance he offers, I have to be honest with you – I wouldn’t have to call him so much if he’d hurry up with the book.