I got into a conversation the other day, as men will do, on the
subject of shims. It is a topic every man is conversant with, because a
man encounters many things in his life which are wobbly.
Men are
problem-solvers by nature, so a shim is like a little wooden man.
You
never know when you will need to shim something up, so I carry one at
all times. Restaurants don't spend a lot of energy on table stability,
and I got tired of having to remedy that with a stack of sugar packets.
Now I just shim it up and eat in peace. Sometimes I will even leave it
there, my gift to future diners.
I don't want to be the
Shim Guy or anything, with a show on A&E and a pile of money,
so don't go reading this and then flooding them with emails and a link
to this column.
It's not like I have had a custom leather shim holster
made, yet. (But if I did, it would feature an embossed cowboy down on
his knees, shoring up a situation.)
For the longest
time, I thought that song from Mary Poppins was called "Shim Shim
Sheree," until I figured out Dick Van Dyke, as a chimney sweep, didn't
really care at all about issues of wobbliness, unless it pertained to
dancing penguins, and even then he was in favor of it.
If MacGyver had had a shim? Done. That show would have been over.
It
is true that a wood shim will wear out a jeans pocket in about a month,
so I have taken to shoving it into my belt, at the small of my back.
It's a conversation starter.
Women tend to look at you a little oddly,
but men will often just nod kind of respectfully. And you know that
whatever plans they had just got converted into a trip to the hardware
store.
A shim is almost a state of mind. It begins
narrowly, then grows wider; its usefulness adjustable to your need.
Whatever gap you find in this metaphor—shim it.
See what I mean?
I have
found in life that the simpler the solution the better. Need to be
taller? Slip a shim in your shoe. Need to level a new window? Shim it.
Need to fill out a 400-word column after procrastinating it all week?
I
think, friends, you know what to do.
