When A Good Idea Goes Bad

My cousin Cletus called me yesterday, seems he had a good idea gone bad. Our friend Earl had emailed him a list of handy home ideas that are supposed to make life easier, Cletus tried it and it didn’t work. As the photo below illustrates, the idea is to put a rubber band around a paint can, then when painting you wipe the excess paint off the brush by wiping the brush against the rubber band, this avoids excess paint on the sides of the paint can. Seems ingenious right? Well there’s a reason you don’t see Home Depot or Lowes selling rubber bands for paint cans.

The phone call (on my cell phone) went like this:

“Bob, I’ve got a problem and need your help.”

“What happened Cletus?”

“You know that email Earl sent us with handy household tips to make life easier?”

“Oh yeah, I saw that. What did you do, forward it to someone as a joke?”

“Not exactly. As a matter of fact I tried one of the tips.”

“Oh no, you didn’t really, did you?”

“I sure did and it worked…at least for a while. The wife is gone for the weekend, she left last night, so I thought I’d surprise her and spend Saturday on doing “honey-dos” around the house – and I thought I’d really surprise her by doing something not on my list, like painting the dinning room.”

“But Cletus, I thought Wilma did all of the indoor painting?”

“Well she does, says I’m not that great at detail work – that’s why I thought this would really be a surprise.”

“No doubt it will be when she gets home. So what’s the problem?”

“Well, I’d been painting for about 30 minutes and things were going nicely. I’d put drop cloths on the floor, I carefully moved the dishes and glasses and other glassware out of the hutch and onto the dinning room table so that when I moved the hutch away from the wall I wouldn’t break anything, I was really pleased with myself…then it happened.”

“What happened?”

“The phone rang. As I got up to answer it I laid the paint brush over the paint can so that the rubber band supported it. As I was walking back into the dinning room after the call I heard a “snap” and a bang and then the sound of breaking glass. The rubber band snapped and sent the paint brush flying into the ceiling and then the brush careened down onto the dinning room table, sending glassware off the table, onto the floor – there is paint everywhere, shards of glass everywhere, the paint is on the ceiling, on the table, on the hutch, on the floor – and I don’t know how many dishes and glasses and what not are broken. Can you come over and please help me clean this up and figure out what to do next?”

“Sorry Cletus, I’m out of town.”