Signs, omens and a scrape with destiny

It was right around this time last year that I borrowed my brother-in-law’s pressure washer and aimed it at my 80-year-old garage. In a raging fit of “Gotta get it done before winter,” I began to blast off decades of peeling paint. Once the misty, musty dust had settled, it was clear that quite a bit of scraping would be required as well before I could begin the actual painting process.

Compared to the shear exhilaration of firing a cold-water cannon at a wall and watching the chips fly, hand scraping is tedious, sweaty, carpal tunnel syndrome inducing work that I decided was best left for the cooler temperatures of autumn.

When autumn came, replete in the splendor of falling leaves, blue skies and those aforementioned cooler temperatures, the very last thing I wanted to do was waste a beautiful day scraping paint. I bumped the project off to Thanksgiving break when I’d have a long weekend; however, when the holiday came, there were relatives to visit, pies to bake and a giant bird to carve. I think you get the picture.

It’s been a year, and my garage has all the curb appeal of a raggedy sycamore tree.

I have long felt the universe is somehow cognizant of my hesitations and failings. When I need a nudge on a project, fate often seems to intervene, offering a sign that I need to get moving, pick up the pace or even (heaven forbid) hire it done.

These signs have come in many different forms over the years. Some are subtle — a flyer for a paint sale randomly appears on handlebar of my bicycle as it awaits me for a ride — and some are more direct — I wake up to find the disembodied head of a paint brush soaked in red acrylic lying across the foot of my bed. Undoubtedly, the most compelling message of all is the sight of my wife waving our checkbook in one hand and a quote from a contractor in the other. Pretty much all is lost once we get to that stage.

And while some “signs” have obviously sprung from the well of human discontent, others are purely the work of a higher power. I mean my wife can be very subversively persuasive when she wants something done, but I can’t imagine her taking the time to plant a paint scraper along the berm of the road I travel every single day in the hope it’ll move me to action. Still, there it was, a 4-inch steel-bladed, plastic-handled paint scraper gleaming in the sunlight at the edge of Old Lincoln Way like a post-it note from the Lord himself!

Those who know anything about me are fully aware I love nothing more than finding fun stuff along the road during the course of a bicycle ride. I’ve spent a good chunk of my life on a bicycle saddle, and one of the things that always keeps the experience new is finding some random object and adding it to my collection — along with whatever origin story I can conjure for it during the balance of my ride. The paint scraper, however, was almost too much. It was like finding the 11th Commandment: Thou shalt quit shirking your duty and scrape!

Sinner that I am, I kept on riding — not so much ignoring the tool as imagining it had merely been misplaced by its owner who would certainly happen by someday soon and be happily reunited. I passed and repassed that same tool for most of the month of August, and it never moved.

In recognition of the omen’s persistence, I finally vowed to stop and pick up the scraper immediately following the long Labor Day weekend and get to work. Alas, when I rode to retrieve it on Tuesday morning, it was gone! I figure I should take that as a sign.

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John atjlorson@alonovus.com.