This column, in addition to being enjoyable to write, has provided me with an inordinate amount of self-reflection.
This week, as I started writing about branding season (something of which I know almost nothing yet am intimately involved in by virtue of marrying a cattle rancher), I kept going off on a tangent which led me to the realization that I have a problem.
I break stuff. I break a lot of stuff. At first, it made for a bemusing sidetrack, but as I started thinking about it and discussing it, it really became notable of the wrecking ball level destruction of which I am capable.
Just this week, my brother and I were repairing my axe, of which the handle had broken off. Previously, in an attempt to remove the axe head from the broken handle, so it could be replaced, I had split the metal head of my hammer in two, a feat which to this day I’m not sure of how it is achievable despite having done so myself.
With a new hammer in hand, we easily replaced the handle, only to nearly break the new axe handle on the second swing.
Back inside, as we were messing around with the partitions on my computer, he asked why the front of my computer was missing, which broke off during the last flight (personally I blame the airline for that one although I’m sure they would contest that). When my brother subsequently hit the delete key, it stuck.
“Oh yeah, I accidentally spilt coke over it. Some of the lesser used keys don’t work so well right now.”
As he was leaving, he walked past a bag with a handmade wooden chess table from Africa from my in-laws’ house which I had mistaken for a stool and subsequently broke by sitting on it.
This is when I really started thinking and came to the realization that in recent-ish memory, in addition to the axe, the computer, the hammer and the chess table, I have broken a grilled cheese maker, two metal drill bits, a water boiler, half an engine, a second axe, several shirts and pants, the finish on my car (while scraping ice off) and possibly a lot more.
In the longer term, among the more notable things, I’ve also walked into trees, walls and, in a feat of true skill, broke my own fingers with my foot.
My family and friends, meanwhile, have started joking that it might not be safe for me to hold the baby.
Possibly I need help before I destroy even more stuff, although I wouldn’t know how you treat breaking things.
Alternatively, I can just keep telling myself that breaking things is just part of living in the country.