Carpentry 101

Our school went on a staff retreat several weeks ago to a nice hotel and just hung out for the weekend. It was great to get to spend some time with people away from school. You can learn so many things about other people and yourself.

Before I explain my discoveries, let me set up the situation. I was working calmly on a puzzle with other people in the lobby area of the hotel. We were using two small tables because one table wasn't big enough. There also weren't enough seats, so I used another table to sit on. This table just had a post in the middle (not 4 legs) so it was a little wobbly. I have pretty good balance, though.

Situation set up, let's move along to the story. As I was doing my part in fitting pieces together, I began to fall backwards. There wasn't much I could do to catch myself, so I just went with it (something I learned from my granddad). My fellow puzzle workers thought it was extremely funny because I remained so calm.

This is not, however, the end of the story. After I got up, I realized that the table top had come off of its stand. Well, what do you do about that? There were two nails sticking out of the post, which should have held the table together (but didn't). So I got the bright idea to fix it. After all, how hard could that be?

Uh-oh, I broke the table. What do I do? I believe this photo accurately captures the moment of panic before the brainstorm.

So, I line up the nails with the holes in the top of the table and begin pounding on the top with my hands.

Let me pause for a second to say that none of my friends moved to help me with this task. They merely sat back, watched, and laughed. Some encouragement!

Anyway, the pounding with my hand wasn't working, so I had my next brilliant idea: sit on it. So, I sat on top of the table and tried to hammer the top back into the base. Idea #2 may have looked silly, but it worked. Finally, after all of this hard work, one of my friends decided to give me a hand (or a foot, rather), and used her shoe to give a few final whacks to make sure it was secure.

The human hammer puts the table back together.

So, I may have a future in table repairs, especially if the world runs out of hammers. I think I'll keep carpentry on the back burner just in case this teaching thing doesn't work out.

The table back in one piece. Triumph! This could be the front of my future business brochure. What do you think?