Who Da Man!

My husband is a problem solver. I don’t mean puzzles – he’s not really into those, although he has become obsessed with Wordle lately – but tell him there’s an issue with something, or a device won’t work, and he pauses only to whip off his underpants and put them on top of his trousers before entering full Superman mode. He’d have been onto the Maria problem with gusto, compiling a list of issues, finding out end-user needs, contacting agencies and sitting down with her in a quiet corner of a Wellington café to discuss what she needed.

He’ll spend hours on the Internet trying to find out why something has happened and how he can fix it, much longer than I would, although I confess that I give up after about a nanosecond, particularly if it’s IT related. In practical scenarios he’ll grab tools and don grubby clothes (the shorts of which have a quite endearing white imprint of his bum cheeks from where he backed into a freshly painted wall whilst wearing them) and get down to it. If he’s successful there’s a call of Who da man, often accompanied by a jig around the room as he tries to high-five anyone in the vicinity (me).

Neil hates little more than a problem he can’t solve. If he can’t fix something he gets frustrated, muttering and becoming deeply embroiled in online suggested options before I have to intervene and tell him it’s time to give up. Where something needs physically fixing and he can’t do it it’s often accompanied by a guttural cry of I should be able to do this! Whereupon I remind him that everyone’s skillset is different and there’s a reason plumbers/electricians etc have jobs. Usually this isn’t before he’s employed his own particular brand of multi-layered cursing towards the offending item. I try to be supportive (honestly) but his latest verbal exercise was so original, not to mention a tad scary, that I couldn’t ask what was wrong because I couldn’t stop giggling. (I won’t repeat it here because it’s not for the faint-hearted and his mother reads this blog.)

I tell you all this because our dishwasher stopped working the other day. Less than ten minutes into its cycle it emitted a strange burp and began beeping. Clearly the beep is to draw your attention and it worked, being bloody annoying. Neil was in his office and either talking to himself or in a meeting, so I found the user guide online and proceeded to follow instructions, which were basically to turn it off and, if the button for that purpose won’t work, ‘disconnect it from power and water and call a technician’. The button didn’t work so, with my ex-IT brain, I tried the off/on thing a few times. Still beeping. I sighed, unplugged it, and parked the problem, knowing that getting a technician to Ohakune wouldn’t be a quick job and I might as well finish what I was doing.

Cue Superman’s intervention (when he’d finished his meeting). Various websites and chatrooms suggested various causes and possible solutions so he set to work, which involved him lying flat on the ground and shoving half his body underneath the dishwasher. I checked the power was still off. There’s a long story of what he tried but I won’t bore you further. Suffice to say this was one of his successes, although twelve good men and true may still be deliberating whether to award him technician status as we’ve only used the dishwasher once since he fixed it. The job done, just like the original Superman, he changed back to civilian clothing, put his glasses on, and went back to his desk.

Who da man!