Problem-Solving Skills

I'm indulging a little pre-baby reminisce because sometimes it's nice to remember my son while he was in utero and not constantly puking on me. Some months ago Kelly and I purchased a new garage door to replace an old wood door that was in the middle of falling apart. I could put my foot through it with minimal effort so off to Kelly's favorite place on Earth.

We pulled into the pick-up yard at Menard's in our bright red Prius, convinced we were going to be able to transport home a 16 1/2 foot garage door. The two dudes helping us, let's call them Jacques and Cousteau, looked at us like we were insane. We were, but damnit if we weren't going to make this work. Jacques immediately sent Cousteau off to track down invoices to confirm they were handing us the correct garage door. Clearly there was a pecking order. Roughly 15 minutes later Cousteau returns and Jacques grabs the invoice and begins directing him on the forklift. I pulled the Prius up to the door, turned off the car, and got out to see a pair of incredulous faces staring back at me. Jacques and Cousteau were not believers. It was going to feel really good when it worked.

I set to work transforming the cabin of the Prius into a giant flat bed truck. Kelly began inspecting the situation. You could literally see all of the equations and angles in the air around her head as she's sizing up space and playing Tetris with the three boxes she's working with. This is her moment, she will have many more. My menial task complete, we were ready. Jacques and Cousteau were nice enough to carry the boxes into the hatch of the car and I helped guide them in from the front passenger door. The first box (the parts and instruction box) fit like a glove. In my excitement I teasingly exclaimed to Jacques and Cousteau, "And you thought we wouldn't make it fit! Look at that. Plenty of room. This is going to be cake." They were not appropriately conciliatory in their demeanor or tone...there was a reason for that: the next boxes were the ones with the actual garage doors in them.

Yep. The actual door panels hung a solid 6 feet out the
back of the hatch. NBD.

As they lift the first box of panels into the car I can immediately spot the problem. This, I will add, is progress when it comes to mine own cultivation of better problem-solving skills . The next part, coming up with a solution is where the wheels tend to come off the wagon for me. When left to my own devices my solutions are either non-existent or terrible. Jacques and Cousteau slid the box up flat on the parts box. As they set it down and the weight of the panels settled they bent like melting glass and rested on the ground. My heart sank. I was not expecting this. I was flummoxed. I had never been more out of my league. Who takes a Prius into a lumber yard and expects to haul a garage door home?! I began to form my apology in my head, "Sorry about this guys, clearly this isn't going to work. We'll have to come back when we can borrow a friend's truck or something," when, from the back of the car came a voice. Confident, clear, matter-of-fact, "Just turn it up on it's edge." Oh right Kelly, like just turning it on it's edge is going to fix the 6 feet of door that's still hanging out the back, good one. Sometimes it's like you can't just admit defeat and...oh, huh, that seems to have done the trick. I'm used to this feeling. Kelly does this to me all of the time. Jacques and Cousteau, on the other hand, this is there job and they done got schooled.

The drive home was uneventful save a few stares from other motorists afraid whatever was in our car was going to come sliding out into the front of their vehicles. Problem number two was glossed over on the drive home by yours truly assuming that I would be able to just carry the panels into the garage on my own. No dice. Kelly being pregnant meant no help from her so I was left to my own imagination...I began taking inventory of things in the garage. The gears in my mind sort of clunked for a minute, kind of like the sound of an engine knock just after the transmission drops while driving down the road. The only thing, ONLY THING, I could come up with was unstrap everything and slam the accelerator through the floor board in hope that the garage door would slide out the back hatch. It was a really terrible idea so I decided not to share.

Kelly spots a Tonka truck amidst the wall of stuff she's currently stashing in the garage until such time as she has a deaf and hard of hearing preschool classroom again. This is her solution, a child's toy. I would have looked at the Tonka truck and thought, "Kelly would be so disappointed if I tried to use that." See?! This is what I'm talking about. I have no feel for this problem-solving stuff. I have two gears in this department: brute force (which, surprisingly, I lack in spades) or panic. There's a finesse to this stuff, a certain creativity that I've never quite grasped. The French call it je nais se quoi. That's a thing. Wait, maybe this is like predestination? Predisposition? Predetermined? Predilection? Fuck, I don't know what it's called. Let's just boilerplate this and say I suck at solving problems. It's probably genetic. Thanks mom and dad.

Mission accomplished you bad-ass little Tonka truck.