Pictures: Josh's Side of the Story

Being a homeowner comes with several challenges. Namely, it means becoming a handyman. Suddenly, such masculine tasks like plumbing and pool filter repair fall to me. Considering I've spent my entire adult life (all 4 years of it) sitting in front of a computer, I haven't the slightest idea how to do any of this. And I'm not just talking about large scale repairs, even the little things that any soccer mom could handle with a tack hammer and a philips screw driver is new to me. This story is about such a task: hanging pictures.

Kelley and I have long wanted a picture over our bed. We've been planning it since we got married almost two and a half years ago. Since we live in the desert and miss the color green (yes I can see green, stop asking), we decided to go with tree photography. Black and white tree photos... well there goes the green argument. But hey who needs color right? So finally, after years of deliberation, we decided to just go to the store and buy a giant tree photo. We cruised up to Michael's Crafts and found the perfect picture. Beautiful trees, an amazing frame, this picture had it all... for only $20! Excited about our good fortune we set off to the store to buy hanging accessories.

Now when I say hanging accessories, I'm sure you are picturing screws and drywall anchors right? Or perhaps even a few small nails? Well you're wrong. Being the anti-handyman that I am I thought it seemed a shame to just go drilling holes in a perfectly good wall, "surely" I thought, "there exists a better solution!" To find this solution I consulted the great and powerful wizard known as Google. The all knowing Google led me to the website of a company that I adore due to their remarkable innovation in a plethora of fields: 3M. These are the guys who invented the post-it note for crying out loud! When I saw that they had a solution for hanging pictures I proudly informed Kelley that I had found our answer.

We set off for Wal-Mart to purchase a box of 3M adhesive picture hanging strips. If you're not familiar with this item, it's pretty much a glorified piece of double stick tape. By now you're probably thinking, what kind of idiot would hang a heavy picture with tape!? I answer you, this kind of idiot. So we go home and stick our picture to the wall. I gotta tell ya, it worked great. It was up in five minutes and we were thrilled. We literally starting pulling more pictures out of the closet to hang. You should know that the package of picture post-its had one and only one warning: do not use to hang pictures above a bed. When Kelley informed me of this I cleverly pointed out that the weight of our picture was well within the limit on the box and that the warning was, without a doubt, just there to appease the 3M lawyers.

Fast-forward several hours. We are well into our evening slumber when we hear a noise. Kelley claims that she knew immediately what the noise was but at 2 am I was sure the wall was crashing in on us. In reality, the noise was the cursed sticky goo that 3M spend thousands of dollars developing ripping off the wall. As that fact struck me so did another, the giant picture frame full of glass was directly over our heads. As I held my wife tightly and said my final prayers to Jesus it was not my life that flashed before my eyes but rather the warning on the box that foretold this very event. Fortunately, our headboard is not all the way up against the wall and the picture slid down behind the bed making a fantastic, Loony Toons worthy crashing noise as it hit.

After telling my wife that I love her very much and apologizing sincerely for trying to kill us, I turned on the lights to survey the damage. The beautiful frame was destroyed upon impact, the glass shattered everywhere, and both the picture and the nice photo matte that surrounded had been sliced by the glass, rendering every single piece of the murderous knickknack useless. Furious at my own stupidity for thinking I could defy gravity with crazy glue, I began to pick up the glass. I placed the largest piece off to the side and spent ten minutes on my hands and knees filling a trash bag with all the shards I found embedded into the carpet. As you may have guessed, trash bags are not glass-proof so as I picked up the bag the glass sliced through it with ease and fell to the ground, creating a veritable cornucopia of glass (which of course broke into even tinier shards).

Frustrated and tired I walked out to the storage closet to get a box for the glass. At this point I should tell you that this storage closet is located outside and can be accessed by exiting through a door in my bedroom leading to the backyard. I mentioned earlier that I had taken the largest piece of glass (which was quite large indeed) and placed it aside. The location that I chose to place this frail, jagged monstrosity was directly in front of the door I just told you about. Upon reentering the bedroom (wearing sandals) I heard yet another profound noise. This was the sound of the glass under my feet shattering into a million pieces, slicing my toe as it exploded (it was an extremely minor nick, but enough to draw blood). At this point my will to live shattered along with the glass. I didn't say anything. I made no noise of any sort. I simply stood, bleeding, staring at the new mess I had created. I literally stood motionless in this manner for several minutes. As my wife hid her head under the blankets fearing an outburst of monumental proportions I silently questioned the glass. How had my life fallen so completely apart in so little time? Surely, like Job, I was a pawn in some cosmic bet and Satan himself had been granted free will to attempt to drive me mad. After closing my eyes for yet another extended period of time whilst summoning all of the willpower that I possess to abstain from screaming every obscenity known to man, I began once more to clean up my mess. This time I was successful and was soon falling asleep to the sound of the other picture that I had hung that night, this one in the kitchen, suffering a similar fate.

My dear friend Scott told me two things upon hearing this tale. First was that I should start a blog, if only to tell this one tragic story to all the world. Second, he told me that hence forth I should "hang pictures like a man." This was sage advice and I followed his words on both accounts (though the blog starting credit goes to Kelley). Upon returning to the store Kelley and I purchased three pictures to replace the one that fell (because if I couldn't even handle one, surely I should attempt three). There now hangs above my bed these same three pictures, solid as a rock and hung as if a man who knew what he was doing had performed the task. Of course, even this was not without a great amount of effort. Apparently my work as a graphic designer has made me obsessed with measurements. Our three pictures could not be carelessly placed on the wall using the old "does it look straight?" method! Nay, these pictures (one big and two small) had to be perfectly aligned and distributed. After an ungodly amount of measurements and scheming, Kelley discovered that it was best to leave the mad man with the pencil to his own devices, muttering unintelligibly to himself while drawing all over the wall.

Last night we slept with our heads at the foot of the bed, just in case :)

-Josh