Joining A Higher Order of Beings

I have a PhD.  It took seven years of post graduate study, added to the four years typical for college, not to mention the other thirteen years spent in Florida's public education system, to earn it.  Yet, to my mind, this does not win me a place among the Higher Order of Beings.  It took a flashlight, a coat hanger, and a rock to do that.

        Let me explain.  

        There are some things, I like to imagine, you just can't learn.  You can admire them, you can try to emulate the process by which they achieve success (and you might even win a time or two), but unless you have the Higher Order Gene you are basically just hurling empty pop cans across a river, in the dark.   

        I'm not talking about riding your little be-streamered, training-wheeled bicycle when you were four.   I'm not talking about building the Leggo Station from the directions when you were seven.  And I'm not talking about the Betty Crocker Cake Mix you made by adding water and pushing a button yesterday.

        I'm talking about shit MacGyver would do.

        For those of you who do not understand the awesomeness who is MacGyver, MacGyver was the most brilliant Action-Adventure show ever aired on American TV.  Between 1985 and 1992, Richard Dean Anderson (A.K.A. resourceful secret agent Angus MacGyver) amazed America's youth by defusing bombs with a Q-tip and a globule of spit, rigging booby-traps with sunglasses and a pair of underwear, or lighting a fire with a piece of wood, some teeth scrapings, and his own backside.  

        MacGyver went by his last name - because what genius wants to be called Angus?  And everywhere he went, he made useless trash into wicked tools.  He never lost his cool.  As the Jeep plunges into the icy river, trapping him inside, MacGyver just looks around, purposeful-like, for some cool shit to jimmy the locks, crash windows so as not to get cut by debris, or turn the Jeep into a submarine and motor on out of there. We foolish mortals might mistake such cool shit for simple lighters, paperclips, shoelaces, or McDonald's wrappers - but no.  To MacGyver, each piece of crap held within it the power to become something awesome.

        This is what spoke to me about MacGyver: He had imagination.  I had imagination.  Why not me?  Why might I not join the Higher Order of Beings represented by MacGyver?  After all, I had ridden the big-kid bike, without training wheels, when I was six - straining my naked little toes to reach, standing up because my feet wouldn't make it on the down-stroke if I sat.  This meant that I could make due with what I had, no matter the odds - or the chance of gravel-rich wipe-outs.  I had looked at the mound of tiny colored plastic in our Leggo box and seen houses, cars, boats, and weapons.  This meant that I could create cool new things out of inane junk.   I had wandered nearly lost and shoeless through the pine swamp and found my way back home in time for dinner.  This meant that I was naturally hardy and capable of surviving on my wits and keen sense of direction (I did try reading the moss on the bark, but the truth is, in Florida, moss grows ALL OVER the trees.  Still I had thought of it, and that had to count for something).

        I was exactly the child primed to imagine herself as MacGyver.

        The rest of my life has consisted of myriad futile attempts to live up to his legacy.  I think these efforts amuse my friends.  For example, I once removed the dragging plastic engine shield from underneath my friend Stephanie's Volkswagen Golf with a hatchet.  She and my other friend, Tara, save up odd tasks for me (challenges, if you will) to keep me occupied while they relax, entertained by my "imagination".  Sometimes, I'm sure, they could accomplish the feat just as well themselves, but they let me do it because they love me.  When Tara sprung her bike chain during the Ride for Hope, both she and her husband stood back with a grin: "Eh, Emily, you know how to fix that, right? You go ahead."  And I did.  For those two seconds, I was MacGyver.

       But today was different.  Today, I know in my soul that I have officially joined the Higher Order of Beings.  The MacGyver Order of Beings.  

       Here's how it all happened:  A few weeks ago, I'd done a lot of yard work.  I mowed the lawn, weeded the plant beds, trimmed, clipped, dug and planted.  In all this gardening hubbub, I somehow managed to leave the keys to my shed upon the ladder which rests on its side near the door.  Here's how that actually happened:  I was pushing the lawnmower up into the shed, as its floor is some foot and a half off the ground, and needed the free hand.  The keys had already tumbled out of my coverall pocket, and so - naturally - I set them nearby on the ladder.  

        Now, the shed door closes with a padlock - nothing fancy, no spring, not even a catch to keep the door closed.  Just the latch and the padlock.  So,  when I had wrestled said lawnmower into the shed - just before the rain, as it happens - I quickly secured the padlock and ran into the house to avoid the downpour.

        Several days later, I noticed that the shed keys were missing.  This is nothing unusual, however.  Thought I: They must be in the pockets of my coveralls; I'll check them when I do the laundry.  But they were not there.  Hm.  Well, thought I, they must be in the bucket I tossed my gardening business into that one time.  But they were not there.  Hm.  Good thing I don't need to get into the shed... I'm sure they're around here somewhere.

        But the whole time, I knew.  I knew their true resting place.  I recalled placing them onto the ladder; I recalled the hurry I had been in; and, sadly, I reflected that locking my keys in the car (about fifteen times, career) and the house (twice) was not something foreign to me.  

        The grass began to grow.  Longer and longer it creeped.  It began to seed.  I told myself: oh, but that's good!  I needed that grass to get a little thicker, a little healthier.  No need to REALLY search out those keys.  But really, I was avoiding the inevitable truth - a proof of personal stupidity that surely disqualified me from the Clan of MacGyver.  Badasses like MacGyver do NOT lock their shed keys in their own shed.  But eventually, I had to face it at last, and with a sigh, I grabbed my Maglite - awesome flashlight of MacGyver-types - and dragged my feet down to the backyard.   I had an idea.

        The shed door is slightly warped, making it easy to wedge your fingers in and have a peer within.  I aimed the beam of my flashlight inside and angled it toward the ladder.  A silver gleam.  A little flash of metal other than aluminum.  The keys.  Right where I had known them to be all along.  I sighed again.  Time to try idea number one.

       This involved a screw-driver and a wrench.  I reasoned that the cheap fools who actually built that shed (a plywood affair constructed under the stilts of my townhouse) probably used simple screws on the latch.  By unscrewing them, I could remove the lock apparatus itself and - Voila! -  I would be in.  But they were not as stupid as I supposed.  The screws were secured on the other side with bolts. Doh!  What to do now?

        Then, it happened.  A flash of brilliance.  MacGyver's own voice spoke to me.  Coat-hanger, he said, and a rock.  Keep your flashlight.

        I ran to the hall closet and grabbed a dry-cleaner-special, unwound it, and stretched it to its full length - keeping the hook at the end.  Then I dashed back down to the shed, where I found a large pebble.  Perfect, I thought, and wedged it into the doorjamb, giving myself a nice space through which to manipulate my new-fashioned stage-crook.  Holding the flashlight steady, I trained it on the keys (no easy feat with such a teeny crack to shine through) and inserted the crook.

        My initial hope was to snag the keyring right off the ladder and - Whohoo! - instant keys.  But maneuvering a crook, I soon discovered, is an underestimated skill.  I only managed to knock the keys to the floor and out of  reach.  But I wasn't daunted.  No.  MacGyver was with me now, and I was getting those keys.  I moved the rock wedge to the bottom of the door, nearer the floor, and tried again.  This time, after a couple of passes, the hook slipped into the keyring and I pulled.

        The sweet tinkling of key-on-key as they cleared the doorjamb and emerged, suspended from the coat-hanger like grapes on a vine, was my own personal Rocky anthem.  I had arrived at the top of the stairs, jersey trainers soaked in sweat, gasping with the glee of triumph.

        Well, I'll just mow the lawn whenever I want, I thought.  I grinned as I walked back up to the house, palming my keys.  My little dog, Pippin, stood in her usual spot on the front steps, searching under the house for cats.  She looked up at my approach, as if to say: "What are you so smug about?"

        "I'm a Higher Order of Being, little dog," I answered.  And at that moment, anyway, I was.