Holes in My Education

Bought spackle yesterday. Seems that when Closet Factory installs all them organizey bars in your closet, they have to rip out that single wooden bar running straight across. And patching the holes and repainting is just not part of their job description.

I don't care a whole lot about the paint color on the inside of my closet, but i figure I should spackle up the holes. Besides, it'll be good practice for future spackling.

As it happens, I've never spackled. Total spackle-free past.

It dawns that I've never even had an opportunity to learn to spackle. Schools taught me cooking and sewing; they taught me to drive and gave me a "Personal Development" course in which I was taught how to write a check (and how to be asked out on a date). Had I chosen, I could have taken Wood Shop, Metal Shop, Plastics Shop, or Auto Shop. But nowhere in there did anyone offer a course on Basic Home Repairs.

You'd think it would come up. I mean, I consider the ability to spackle a hole and paint a wall to be rather more useful than to, say, build a birdhouse in Wood Shop (or, I'm told, a bong in Plastics). But school thought it was important enough to teach me how to hem a skirt, scramble an egg, make a 3-point turn, and pay a bill -- life skills all, truly -- but patch a hole, install a smoke detector (or, apparently, change a face plate on a phone jack) are things the education system thought I'd just pick up along the way.

It dawns that maybe when they're busy teaching me how to politely reject an offer for a date, it would do them well to teach me how to do basic home repairs (since, you know, having rejected the date, I won't be able to rely on some man to do them).