One Ring To Rule Them All

Posted: October 22, 2014 at 4:49 am

“I thought it was supposed to be hot all the time in Provence, Billy,” said Pixie, the gentle half of the Corey and Pixie roadshow, married friends visiting from Ottawa. “I need my slippers.”

“Well, it is November, and it is nighttime,” I said. “It cools off fast around here.”

“Are you sure your furnace is working?” asked Corey.

Corey is a brainiac engineer, nicknamed MacGyver. He can take anything apart, can fix anything, understands everything, and draws schematics of electrical circuits for fun. Pixie, cute as a button, is scary smart, but instead of Popular Mechanics, she reads cookbooks, from start to finish, like novels. When it comes to anything broken, except eggs, she defers to the expertise of her husband.

“It’s definitely cold in here,” Pixie said. “Maybe you should look at the furnace Corey.”

“Oh boy,” said Corey, with all of his buttons pushed: something was broken, it was big, and he had never seen it before.

I led them into our laundry room to introduce them to our space-age, Apollo mission furnace, which was most definitely off. It was an impressive looking unit, a ‘de Dietrich Chaudière,’ a white and shiny monolithic block, of a size apes dance around seeking enlightenment. Corey’s eyes were as big as saucers.

“Maybe we should call Rebecca first,” said Carol, referring to our landlord.

“Since she lives in England, I don’t think she’ll be over here with her toolbox anytime soon,” I said.

“No problem,” said Corey, “I can figure this out.” He had already pulled off the furnace’s front panel, a sheet of thundering metal larger than him. I had never seen anyone so happy that a furnace was broken. Corey dreamt of intellectual projects like this, but this one doubled the fun, as the machine was built in a foreign land and there was no owner’s manual. He poked around a bit, with his arm inserted up to the elbow into the machine’s innards. Corey turned this and readjusted that, and the crease between his eyes deepened. Stymied, he googled the furnace’s schematics, an orderly explosion of numbered parts, tagged and arrowed but undamaged in the blast, and pored over those for a while. In the 25 years that I have known Corey, I have never seen him stumped by a mechanical or electrical problem, so when he said, “Let’s call a furnace repair guy,” I knew it was serious.

Pixie and Carol had been in the other room drinking wine, which is what I wanted to be doing, but I felt it was a guy thing to stand in solidarity with Corey while he examined the furnace. As Pixie entered the laundry room, she said, “Why don’t you try pushing that big red button on the front?”

“Pix,” Corey said, “I’ve read everything on the internet on this furnace, and I know that button has nothing to do with restarting.” And then in an unCorey-like way he pointed to his iron engineering ring and added, a bit exasperated, “I’m the engineer, so I’ll handle this.”

Pixie held up her left hand and said, “See this ring? I’m your wife, and I’m telling you to try pushing the big red button.”

Every married guy knows which of the two rings won that argument. Corey pushed the unidentified button, let’s call it the ‘restart’ button, and the furnace roared to life.