Sometimes I love having a man brain.

The great thing about a man brain is that you can take a problem, analyze it, and find a solution – especially when it comes to home maintenance. Yes siree, your basic electrician, plumber, gardener and meat cooker / devourer are all part of the package for most men, even if they repress them in favor of watching TV.

A man brain is an amazing thing. I got mine from my mom.

Dad was and is a hard worker, don’t get me wrong. He can wield a chainsaw like most men wield a remote control (and he can do that, too). But when it came to fixing things he wasn’t familiar with, my dad would go for the phone, while my mom went for the toolbox. Away she’d go, pulling wires, unclogging drains, stripping wallpaper. And she always made it work.

My man brain is just one of her little gifts to me.

It was Sunday when I once again got the chance to pull out my man brain and put it on display for my adoring fan, Alina. Our garbage disposal quit working. I was dutifully feeding it eggshells, wilted lettuce leafs and popcorn dregs when it grinded to a complete halt, it’s guttural roar squelched to an anguished buzz as the electric motor struggled in vain.

Being the handyman that I am, I headed for the telephone to call our landlords.

I didn’t quite make it. A tinge of guilt stopped me, perhaps a bit of shame. Because I am a man, after all, and men are supposed to be able to fix things. Not only that, but we had recently called our landlords to help with an ant infestation, and I’m the sort of guy who doesn’t like to bug people when I can solve the problem myself.

So, come Monday, I dug out my trusty box of tools and prepared for an evening of cramming my long giraffe neck under the sink and cussing under my breath. I had never taken apart a garbage disposal before, but I wasn’t intimidated. Even when I make a mess of things I’ve never been afraid to try fixing something myself, thanks to my mom. As a kid, I loved taking things apart and seeing if I could put them back together. And I usually could.

There have been disasters, though; like the time I tried to replace the starter in my van’s engine and stripped the threads in the engine block. Let me tell you, I felt pretty manly explaining to the mechanic how I tried to fix it myself, standing there like a tall goof with my hands covered in grease, while he looked at me like I was the biggest moron on the planet for nearly ruining my entire engine because I couldn’t screw in a bolt.

Yeah. There have been those times. But there were few and far between, and this little disposal was going to be child’s play for my spatially-oriented, problem-solving man brain.

After managing to yank it off, I discovered that a simple disposal-ectomy wasn’t going to cut it. I actually had to dismantle the entire unit. The reason was that it had taken a cue from my son and tried to swallow an entire plastic bag. (We don’t feed Charlie plastic – he just tries to cram more into his mouth than he can possibly chew with his two teeth.)

A mere 3/4 horsepower could no longer make this baby turn. It had wrapped one of those thin produce bags around its shaft 12 bazillion times, and it was goin’ nowhere.

Needlenose pliers were helpful only to a point. The bag was so wound up, I had to literally force apart he gooey tar that held this thing together, strip it down to its nuts and pick little pieces of disintegrated plastic out with a paperclip (one of the world’s most useful tools next to duct tape).

Let me just take a moment to say that the inside of a garbage disposal is not that impressive. For all the work it took to pull that thing apart, I expected a wicked assembly of miniature katanas…at the very least, an Intel microchip. Nope – It’s a gigantic coil of copper wire, a shaft and a couple of blunt teeth. That’s it. Probably one of the most basic piles of primal machinery that ever got sold for a hundred bucks. Seriously, your electric toothbrush has higher technology than this thing.

Putting it back together wasn’t too tough, thanks again to my man brain. No matter that I hadn’t paid any attention to how I had taken it apart – I just did like I always do: slap things together where they look like they should go and hope I don’t have a screw left over.

I didn’t re-mount it that evening because I thought I would need to replace the black tar-like sealant that was gluing the two halves together. But after some thought, I determined that the tar was still sticky enough. I slapped it back together, cinched up the screws and clamped it to the sink.

The moment of truth came when I replaced the pipes, plugged it in and flipped the switch. I half expected the blunted teeth to come flipping out of the sink and whack off my index finger, but it didn’t happen. The big, mean “Badger” brand disposal purred like a kitten.

Thank you, mom, for my man brain.

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