May 31, 2017 3 min read

It was all going so swimmingly (don’t you love that word?). The hedges had transformed from lovely landscaping to something resembling a jungle and were ready for their annual spring trim. This is no small task given that some of these shrubs are now taller than I am.

After mowing the lawn one day then embarking on hedge trimming the next, I was finally seeing the finish line as I whacked away at the final few shrubs. My tool of choice was a little electric hedge trimmer that is actually really fun to use, and I even flirted with the idea of carving the giant hedges into animal shapes like Johnny Depp did in “Edward Scissorhands.” I was also getting tired – very tired. My arms felt like rubber, and my trimming was getting sloppy. That’s when disaster struck.

Once finished trimming, I embarked on the cleanup phase. As I raked out the trimmings, I saw a piece of cable sticking out of the ground and thought it must have been a leftover from when the installers recently buried the cable line. Then … it hit me. I shuddered, ran inside, turned on the television and let out a mighty scream of disgust when the screen read, “We’re having trouble connecting.” My phone Wi-Fi couldn’t connect. Yes, Calamity Jane had struck again by slicing the cable with the hedge trimmer. Normally, this would have induced frustration and embarrassment, but this was an emergency. You see, Game 5 of the Penguins-Senators series was on in a mere three hours, along with pole qualifying for the Indy 500. I called the cable company, which was, of course, closed because it was Sunday. A recording suggested trying online chat support. That’s tough to do when you just severed your internet connection. I turned off Wi-Fi and managed to use my cellular internet connection to schedule a service call the next afternoon.

With time running out and the game about to start, I readied to jump in the shower before dashing to a sports bar to watch the Pens. Then, another idea hit me: I can fix this myself! I grabbed a box cutter, raced outside to the sliced cable, unscrewed it from the connector and grasped the cable coming from the ground. I stripped away the plastic coatings, stuffed the tiny copper wire into the connector, threaded it into the tiny hole in the other connector and screwed them together tightly.

Quickly, I ran into the house and said a prayer before hitting the TV’s power button. Yes! It worked! Just in time to watch the puck drop. I had transformed from Calamity Jane to MacGyver. The next day, I told the cable company they didn’t have to come and that the problem was fixed. They don’t have to know that MacGyver did it.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.