365 Jobs: Handyman Sketches: Bountiful Gifts

Don't Blame Me, I'm Just Here to Fix the Garbage Disposal: Part Seven


Bountiful Gifts

Back is cramping
sacrum misaligned
as in stabbing pain I replace
another garbage disposal while
the petulant blond babysitter
watches afternoon television.
She tells the toddler: "You can't come out
of the playpen until you stop crying."
She leans toward the screen, oblivious,
a loose blouse — nice, doubly nice —
we gaze, comrades, he and I.
The kid stops crying.
Sciatica, gone.
For a blessed moment
there is no suffering.



Note: Among my contracting jobs, for many years I've served as the on-call handyman for a group of townhouse-style apartments — or rental units — or whatever one should call an enclosed square of two-story dwellings in a subdivision of Sunnyvale, California.  It's steady money.  As a minor league writer, I need that.
I tried to summarize the experience in prose, but verse seems to work best.  Most of the events took place in the 1980s though a few are more recent.  This is Part Seven of a series.