WHENEVER I am faced with a machine I need to analyze, assemble or install, my sisters always mockingly ask, “You need a man?” I am the girl, after all, who professes not to need a man for anything—well, except, maybe to assemble and install a machine.
Assembling or installing a machine fills me with a lot of anxiety which is why I try to avoid this task by having the vendor do the assembly and installation for me or by refraining from buying stuff that needs assembly and installation.
I’m not really a complete moron when it comes to machines because I have successfully assembled and installed quite a number but age has made me feel inadequate as well as impatient. I feel like I can no longer understand the instructions and if at first try, I don’t succeed, I just want to give up.
Last week, I attempted to assemble and install my printer—initially, with zero success. I’m not sure what caused this record-breaking idiocy but I later learned that I had simply neglected to press the “Power” button. I was eventually able to install my printer and soon enough, was happily churning out pages from my phone, but only after much hyperventilation and help from my sister.
Adding to my anxiety was my father’s nagging to unbox an air purifier with a mosquito catcher that my mother had received for her birthday last February. As you know, it’s now April so I decided to do it as well—quite masochistically on the very same day I was trying to install my printer.
So it was a supremely stressful day for me with both the printer and the air purifier on my “to do list.” I miraculously figured out how to assemble the air purifier with the help of another sister. Oh yes—despite some very divergent interpretations of the instructions going back and forth between us.
So I was feeling like a genius at the end of the day despite feeling like an idiot during the earlier part of the day.
So do I need a man in my life? Well, I can tell you that there are moments when I feel like I need one—but these moments only happen when I’m tired and no longer want to think or when I’m frustrated and no longer want to try again—to get a machine working.
The rest of the time, I feel my life works seamlessly without a man. At any rate, I am being sexist when I expect a man to solve my “machine problems.” These expectations are completely without merit as many men are quite clueless with machines and many women are quite capable of getting machines up and running.
Some 10 years ago, my sister and I needed to assemble a desk for my niece. At some point in the assembly, I wailed in defeat, “We need a man!” My niece, raised in a household of feminists, quickly chided me, “We don’t need a man, Auntie. We can do this!” And we did.
At this point in my life, I think what I need is patience—not a man.