B.A.Timmons: The Adventures of HandyMan, Chapter 3

description of blog

This photo was taken by our daughter, Sarah Timmons, or my wife, depending on who you ask. We were in Rehoboth Beach, DE on Easter Sunday, 2011.

Several years ago, on the way home from a family vacation, I picked up a notebook and quickly recorded an incident that had occurred involving our son. Eventually, I used that story to illustrate something about my spiritual walk as a believer in Christ. Thus began a deliberate attempt to document the significance of everyday events. Almost any ordinary circumstance in daily life can become fodder for another story. This, almost by definition, lends itself to a blog.

Of course, many of the entries here are just ordinary diary style stuff... the stuff of ordinary blogs. Good grief, I don't want to be ordinary.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Adventures of HandyMan, Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sidekick Gets a Name

It was just an ordinary day for HandyMan. He stood on a frosty roof at 7:45 in the morning, the temperature a cool 28 degrees - as cold as - well, it was very cold. He wondered about the likelihood of sliding off the roof and impaling himself on the cast iron fence below.

As though this was not enough on his plate, he was summoned by Yet to be Named Sidekick.

"I want my name to have something to do with truth... it's not always pretty but I call it like I see it... in myself and in others."

In a moment of weakness he said "I am too stinking cold to do superpower work right now."

"Illumin-girl would tell you to ignore me under the circumstances."

"Illumin-girl, huh? It has a nice humble tone.... Why not "God's Gift to Man Girl"?

"Mmmmm. That has a nice ring to it. So, when do we begin fighting?...uh... what are we fighting? Evil, status quo, injustice?"

"All of the above. We started yesterday. You weren't paying attention."

"How did I miss it? I thought you were changing and would get back to me" Illumin-girl was referring to a superhero situation she had raised the previous day. HandyMan had told her he would need to change into his superhero suit, and would get back to her later with a solution. He informed her that this could take some time, given the difficulty of the problem. But Illumin-girl failed to notice that Handyman cleverly addressed the question by the end of the day, and we pick up the conversation there...

"HandyMan worked it all out without you even being aware of it. Case resolved, although you didn't even sense an immediate improvement in the situation. That's the beauty of it."

In fact, that was the beauty of HandyMan's work. His solutions were usually methodical, and thus slow in coming. (In this case, the "changing into my suit" excuse was just a ruse.) The solutions crept up on the situation, and then pounced on them like a lion. Yet, paradoxically, in the face of the overwhelming brilliance of it all, it often took some time for the solution to dawn on the recipient. To their eyes, it may not look like a solution at all.

It was at this point that HandyMan realized that Illumin-girl may need more superhero sidekick training than he had realized. But at least she had a name now.