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No, the title is not misspelled. This whole post is about a hole, or holes, so the title is a play on words. Y’all know how much I love words! Read on.
Willie, like most men I know, is madly in love with tools. Big ones—we have a sawmill in our backyard, for heaven’s sake! Tiny ones—yes, there’s a special tool just for slicing baseboards. He treats them all like beloved pets with power cords.
And yet, for reasons unknown to science, the moment you suggest cutting a hole in a wall, ceiling, or God forbid, a roof, the man panics like you’ve asked him to amputate a limb. Hang a picture? “But what if it leaves a mark?!”
So when he needed to drill a hole in the barn to connect tubing for our split unit condenser, you’d think he was dismantling a bomb. He stalled for days, paced like an expectant father, and when he finally picked up the hole saw, it was with the gravitas of a brain surgeon. The result? A 3-inch hole. I laughed so hard I nearly ruptured something.
Then came the roof. We had to pop a flue pipe through for a wood stove, and you’d have thought we were breaching the International Space Station. He geared up, gave himself a Rocky-style pep talk, and drilled the hole like it was his moment of glory. Ta-da! The pipe went in. The world did not end.
And then a storm of Biblical proportions rolled in. Willie watched the roof like it was a live feed from Mission Control. No leaks. No water damage. He was one very relieved man and I—well—I wasn’t the least bit worried. I knew he had used enough silicone on that pipe boot to seal a submarine!
Lesson learned: if I ever want to see my husband short-circuit in real time, I just have to whisper, “Let’s cut another hole.” Or, for special occasions, “In the roof.”
I’m saving that for our anniversary.