What would possess a man who's quite ordinary in most respects to pull on a little cotton dress, a pair of cheap rhinestone-studded sunglasses and a wig with a purple headband? Is he trying a mid-life foray into an alternative lifestyle? Is he going to a fancy-dress ball and needs to look smashing?

The answer to both is No. As a matter of fact, I'm wearing them to a fight.

Our town's second annual Relay For Life to raise funds for the American Cancer Society is slated for this weekend. The event has been dubbed "the town's biggest block party" and will feature a number of fun events. We're bringing in a "bounce house" and a couple of stock cars for the kids and an assortment of games and trinkets for everyone. Food booths and music will complete the carnival atmosphere, and the people who come out can also enjoy a silent auction. Behind all the festiveness and fun there is a deadly-serious battle: The fight against cancer. The games, the food booths and the auction all exist to raise money to provide support programs for cancer survivors and their families and to fund the search for a cure. I visited the first one last year. This year, I'm a team captain.

One of the fundraising events is called "Miss Relay," in which men doll themselves up in ladies' fashions and try to collect funds from friends and family among the crowd. The gentleman with the heaviest purse wins the coveted title of "Miss Relay" in a crowning ceremony, complete with tiara.

Being a good team captain, I offered the other men on my team the opportunity to be good sports and enter the "Miss Relay" competition. "Come on, it's for a good cause," I cajoled. My cajoling wasn't met with wild enthusiasm. In fact the replies ranged from glacial silence to an emphatic "NO!!" So, being the team captain, it fell to me to take on the duty. Such is the price of leadership.

The first step in meeting the challenge was to refocus my fashion eye. I didn't want to be just another guy in a halter top and Daisy Duke shorts; I wanted something to make the event special. But on the other hand I didn't want to blow a lot of money on a dress I'm only going to wear once. Where could I find that perfect balance between high fashion and low cost? But of course: The Goodwill Store!

One evening after work I drove to a Goodwill store in a section of town a good distance from my office and at least fifty miles from home. I felt a touch of trepidation as I parked my truck and walked to the store. I thought, "This is for a good cause. I can't show the white feather." "Like heck I can't," responded the other side of my brain. "I can show 'em the whole swan!" By that time I was inside; there was no retreat. I walked past the selection of used microwaves and about-1000-piece jigsaw puzzles, right into the ladies' section. Rows and rows of spartan racks held hundreds of blouses, skirts and dresses, all sorted by size and color. Magentas, turquoises and chartreuses all shouted from their hangers. Truly, I was in no-man's-land.

My eyes darted about the racks as my nerves shouted and tried to wave me off. I hurried past the blouses and skirts; I had no desire to spend time mixing and matching. The goal was to grab something, anything that would fit me, pay for it, stuff it in a bag and hit the road before someone from work showed up. I walked down to a rack stuffed with the largest items in the store. Just my rotten luck, there was some woman there doing some serious shopping for herself! I scanned the rack hoping for a white dress with blue-and-purple print flowers like Vicki Lawrence wore for her role as "Mama" on The Carol Burnett Show. The closest thing I found was a black-and-white checkered-print cotton dress with opposite-colored flowers in each square. I grabbed it off the rack and held it up; the top part looked about as wide as one of my shirts. I turned it from side to side. A familiar, decidedly masculine aroma passed through the air: The dress had been laundered in the same stuff they use to wash gym towels. Somehow I found the scent comforting. "Oh yeah, this'll do." I mused aloud as I tossed the dress over my arm. I caught the lady shopper giving me a quizzical look as I departed.

I made straight for the checkout, pausing only briefly to scan the purse collection. A man who appeared to be a truck driver watched me through narrowed eyes. "Some other time," I thought as I hustled off and dropped the dress on the checkout counter. I wasn't about to try it on in the store. I'd rather be out the $4.99 than explain to a crowd of rubberneckers why I had a dress on over my slacks and loafers.

I tossed the bag with the dress on the floor of the truck and made for home, glad to have my biggest purchase behind me. There was no sense in pushing my luck, I reasoned as I turned for the on-ramp. Tomorrow would have bargains of its own.

I left the dress in the truck when I got home. I figured I'd bring it in later after I had a chance to determine how my wife, who's already seen me through a few lapses of good sense and sanity, would react to this latest adventure.

After dinner I dug around in our closet and found the second piece of my ensemble: Carolyn's 1976-era wig. It's sort of a light brunette, about shoulder-length, and seemed to match well with the style of the dress, as far as I could tell. Miss Relay's tiara was as good as mine; now that I had my fashion basics it was time to accessorize.

After work the next day I went to another Goodwill store. The apprehension I felt the day before had eased a bit, but I still knew well that I wasn't in my home territory. I needed a decent-sized purse to hold the collected funds, and hopefully lots of them. Today's hunt was more difficult as the handbags and purses in this store weren't on one central rack; they were scattered throughout the ladies' department in wire bins atop the clothes racks! Faced with the possibility of wandering through foreign territory once again, I decided that perfect was nowhere near as important as big. I pawed through the first rack, enduring the same sidelong glances I'd felt the day before. There was nothing suitable. I stepped, still quickly, down the next aisle. Near the bottom of the bin I found a large white clutch purse. I pulled it out if the bin, opened it up and looked inside. It had a built-in coin pouch and most important, it was huge! I rolled it up in my arm like you'd carry a football and started for the checkout.

I decided while as I was there to take a moment and look for a good used turntable. I strolled over to the electronics department and wandered a bit, checking out elderly stereos, forlorn clock radios, and well-used toaster ovens, blenders and toys. I was almost around to home furnishings when I realized that I was wandering through the store carrying a purse! The realization rapidly turned to self-conciousness. I looked around the area; a few people turned their heads quickly away. "Well, I've made this big a scene," I thought, "what else can I do?" There was only one logical course left: I went shopping for shoes to match my bag.

Day Three came. Neither Goodwill nor Pay-less had the cheap canvas tennis sneakers I wanted. Actually, they had some, but not in a mens' 10 1/2. I contented myself with a pair of sandals. They're brown leather, so they don't coordinate too well with my white purse. But since it's only for one half-hour event it's hardly worth fussing.

I needed two things to finish off my costume I wanted something purple, because purple is the official Relay For Life color; and a large pair of cheap sunglasses. I found both at the local dollar store. For about six bucks I came away with a purple headband and a pair of black rhinestone-studded sunglasses. As a matter of fact the rhinestones may even be imitation...these babies are cheap! The checkout lady either thought that I picked them out for someone else or she was of the "don't ask, don't tell" mindset. "Oh, these are pretty" was all she said as she plunked them over the scanner.

At last the pieces came together. I gathered all my purchases in my den and spread them over the chair. I stepped back and admired the whole ensemble. "Not bad for under fifteen bucks," I thought. The only thing left to do was try it on. That's when the awesome, horrible realization struck me...I had to put on a dress! Worse yet, I'd have to wear it out in public amid friends and neighbors at a major community event! What had I committed to this time? I felt my face flush; at that point I wasn't sure that I was man enough to carry it off.

I could feel my bravado shrinking as I lamely flipped the dress over in my hands. I had no idea how to put it on. I checked for a zipper. There was none. I pulled at the buttons. They're just for decoration. I figured that it must just slip on like a big t-shirt.

"It's for a good cause," I mumbled as I slid my arms in...

o Will Buddy Ter have the cojones to get in touch with his feminine side?

o What will BT get more of: donations or propositions?

T.J. tried not to look anyone in the face as he scrambled to pick his papers up off the hallway floor in front of the art room. Why did Andy Clifton choose him to pick on? T.J. was skinny for an eighth grader, there was no getting around that. And he hated to fight. Those two qualities made him a bully magnet. And Andy Clifton was definitely a bully. He sneered down over his shoulder at T.J. as he swaggered away after knocking T.J.'s books to the floor. He did it just because he could. Andy was only a seventh-grader, and slightly shorter than T.J. But he was a little more muscular and he hung around with the other tough kids. So he took advantage of T.J.'s timid nature to shake him up. And T.J. was shook. He grabbed his books and hurried around the corner. His stomach churned.

Most days T.J. stopped at Matt's house after school. Matt lived straight across the road from the junior high. They were in the same eighth-grade class. They both liked to build models. They both liked to race their bikes on the track behind the school. And T.J. could watch the street from Matt's living room, and cut out for home when the coast was clear.

The two boys worked on Social Studies homework at the dining room table. "We kicked some serious butt on the red team in gym today." Matt said.

T.J. scribbled an answer on his paper. "I hate Bombardo."

"Why?" Matt asked. "It beats running laps, doesn't it?"

"I just don't like it. I always get knocked out early."

"Heck, all you have to do is catch the ball and the other guy goes out."

"I can't. Some of those guys really whip it." T.J. rubbed his arms, reliving the sting of getting smacked with a whipped basketball. He turned back to his studies, pretending to be fascinated with the Bolshevik Revolution. The room grew quiet.

"I heard Andy Clifton got you again today," Matt said without looking up from his book.

"Yeah," T.J. replied. "He's a jerk. What'd you get for 3a?"

"Lenin. When are you going to do something about him?"

"About who?" T.J. knew darn well who. But he wanted to avoid the topic.

Matt looked across the table. "You know. Clifton. Are you just going to take it?"

"No, I'm not going to just take it." T.J.'s voice had an edge. He knew what Matt would say next. And he'd give anything to hear something else.

"You've got to fight him, Teej. Make him back off. It's the only way."

"You think I want to get my butt kicked?"

"By who? Andy's a shrimp. Was 3c 1917?"

T.J. checked his paper. "I had 1918. OK, Clifton's a shrimp. But he's got big friends."

"And you've got chicken feathers in your shorts!" Matt chided.

"What, were you checking me out before gym?"

Matt threw a crumpled paper at T.J. "Gross! But you still have to make Clifton back off."

"So I've got to hit him?"

"Either that or get used to chicken feathers."

T.J. became a master of evasive maneuvers. He left his bike at Matt's house so he wouldn't be an easy target at the bike rack. He never took the same streets home twice. In school, though, he was trapped. T.J. tried avoiding the art room hallway, taking the hallway by the office to get from Math to Social Studies. But that route was longer and he usually ended up tardy. When he walked down the art room hallway he tried carrying his books under his right arm. Clifton just pulled a U-turn and got him from behind. It went on for two weeks. Every day Matt asked when T.J. was going to flatten Clifton. And every day T.J. evaded Matt's question.

No one, not even T.J., knew what was special about the day. Maybe nothing was. T.J. walked down the art room hallway, looking ahead but down. He wasn't checking oncoming traffic like usual. His mind was on the results of his last Social Studies test. He almost made the corner when he felt the familiar pound against his books and heard them hit the floor. He stopped dead, holding just his three-ring notebook. Andy Clifton looked back, taunting with that mean sneer, daring T.J. to do something about it. Clifton laughed and strutted down the hall, joking with the kid next to him. T.J. threw the notebook down. Hard.

Something in T.J.'s brain flipped from yellow to red. He wheeled around and stormed after Andy Clifton. He stared at the back of Clifton's head like a hawk darting down after a field mouse. His arms were tense and his head felt hot as he caught up. T.J. hit Andy Clifton hard between the shoulders. That got his attention. He spun around and threw a fist at T.J's head. It grazed his ear. A crowd of kids stopped and circled the two. T.J. stepped up and threw some badly-made body blows at Clifton's ribs. Clifton threw some back. They landed with dull thumps. Andy Clifton was a better fighter, but not good enough to back T.J. off.

The fight didn't last thirty seconds. T.J. stared at Andy, who pressed his back against the display case next to the art room door. Somehow Andy Clifton didn't look the same. The sneer was gone from his face; his eyes looked disbelieving, almost puzzled. Andy still wasn't afraid of T.J. But now, by heaven, T.J. wasn't scared of him, either.

T.J. looked Andy square in the face. "Don't ever do that again!" he shouted, and T.J. wheeled around and stooped to pick up his books for the last time, pushing a kid he didn't know out of the way as he left the circle. He breathed hard, and he didn't catch his wind until he was almost in the Social Studies room.

After school Friday Matt and T.J. worked on math homework at Matt's house. "I still can't believe you wailed on Andy Clifton! Right in front of the whole school!"

T.J. kept his gaze on his math paper. "It wasn't the whole school, Matt. Did you get 2.15 for number six?"

"I got 2.1414. Did his friends come after you?"

"No."

"Did Clifton knock your books down again?"

"No. In fact he's been...I don't know, not exactly nice, but better."

"Respectful?"

"That's it! He's been respectful. I still can't believe it."

Matt leaned his chair back and smiled. "Told ya. You just have to hit a bully once and make him back off. It always works."

"I guess you're right," T.J. shrugged.

"I heard there were chicken feathers by the art room after the fight. Must be they fell off you." Matt laughed.

T.J. stood up and turned around. "Oh yeah, they're all gone," he said over his shoulder. "Want to see?" He grabbed his belt.

"Don't, you pervert!" Matt yelled, and threw an eraser. T.J. made a backhanded grab for the eraser and caught it. He spun and pointed at Matt, a huge grin on his freckled face. "Psyched ya!"

"You're going to be a monster at Bombardo, Teej."

"One thing at a time."

In the cool of an early Saturday morning, a boy and his dad sit in a small green rowboat in the middle of a small, still lake. The dark lake is surrounded by green trees, the early-morning sun just brushing the very top limbs. Red-winged blackbirds trill from the bushes near the shore, their songs joined by an occasional harrumph from a bullfrog. The boy, about ten years old, wears a bright orange life vest. His dad, in his mid-30s, watches as the boy's bobber dances on the surface of the lake.

"Not yet," Dad says. "Wait 'til he takes the bait."

"How will I know when he takes the bait?" the boy asks.

"You'll see the bobber duck under the water. There! Just like that. Get 'im!"

The boy jerks hard on the pole. The bobber and a bare hook fly through the air and plop back on the water.

"Looks like he stole your bait," says Dad. "Better bring it back in."

It's been a morning of stolen bait. A good supply of garden-fresh nightcrawlers rests in a dirt-filled coffee can in the bottom of the boat. The boy reaches in, finds a good fat one, and threads it on his hook. He casts the line back over the side.

"Not so hard!" instructs Dad. "Look, you tossed your bait right off the hook. See over there?" Dad points to a circle on the smooth surface of the lake, a good distance away.

The boy's shoulders drop. "Dad? I'm cold." he says.

"It'll warm up pretty soon," replies Dad. "Put another worm on."

The boy re-baits his hook and casts again, more gently. The crawler is secure on the hook. The bobber dances for a moment and rests. The boy splashes his hand in the water to rinse off the dirt.

"Don't do that," says Dad, "you'll scare the fish away."

"The lake feels warm," says the boy, wiping his fingers on his jeans.

"That's because the water is warmer than the air. Once it warms up the lake will feel cool."

The boy turns back to watching his bobber. The boat drifts where it will, occasionally gliding too close to a garden of water lilies, just the place where fish hide but lines get tangled. Dad takes the oars and rows out a bit.

Again, the boy's bobber flutters for a moment and then drops. The boy tightens his grip on the cane pole.

"OK, not too hard this time," says Dad. "Just set the hook."

The boy snaps his wrists, and the bobber races away, and then heads back.

"Don't give him any slack now," warns Dad. "He'll spit the hook out. Just bring him over to me." The boy swings his pole toward the bow of the boat. Dad grabs the line. The boy raises up the tip of his pole, and a moment later a tiny crappie flops around on the bottom of the boat.

"All right!" shouts the boy. "I got one!"

"Yeah, you did!" Dad smiles.

"Can we keep him?" the boy asks.

"We'll have to measure him." Dad lays the fish on top of his tackle box. "Nope," Dad says. "He's only five inches. Toss 'im back"

The boy, impatient to try again, pulls the hook out of the fish.

"Not like that!" Dad scolds. "That hurts him. How would you like it if someone pulled a hook out of you?"

"I wouldn't." The boy looks down at the tiny fish in his hand.

"Well, then don't you do it. Now throw him back." The boy throws the fish in like he's in deep left field.

"Not so hard," says Dad. "You don't throw them so far."

The lifeless crappie floats several yards away. The sun has risen; its light shines about halfway down the trees. The boy shifts on his cushion, pulls another crawler out of the can, and casts his line again. Dad takes the oars and pushes the boat out toward deeper water.

"We should get a motor," the boy says.

Dad shakes his head. "This lake's too small for motors. We'll go out a little further and see if we can find some big ones."

Almost immediately both bobbers disappear. The boy lets out a whoop. "I think we found 'em!" Dad says as he grabs up the landing net.

"Yeah!" says the boy, pushing the toe of his sneaker against the side of the boat as he pulls hard on his pole, the tip bent down, nearly in the water. A moment later Dad scoops up an eight-inch rock bass. He sets it on the bottom of the boat and turns to help his son. Dad swings the landing net to the other side of the boat.

"Bring him to me," coaches Dad. "Don't let him spit the hook out." The boy twists himself as far as he can go, lifting the pole up, trying to keep the line tight. Dad makes a long reach with the landing net, and the boy has a big rock bass of his own. The boy sets his pole down and stares at their catch, his pulse pounding. He grins up at his dad.

"Looks like we caught dinner." Dad says.

"Aww, I wanted pizza," replies the boy.

Dad laughs. "You nut!" he says. "You'd turn down a fish dinner for pizza?"

"We always have pizza on Saturday."

Dad puts the fish on the stringer, then hooks up another crawler. The dad and his son pull in a few more rock bass, along with a few bluegills. Before long the sun shines high over the treetops. The fish move on.

"Well, whaddya think?" Dad asks. "Had enough?"

"Yeah," the boy says, "they're not biting anymore."

Dad brings in his line, flicking what's left of the crawler into the lake. The boy follows suit. "I'm getting hot now," he says, tugging on his life jacket. "Can I go swimming?"

"Not here," Dad says, pulling on the oars. "This isn't a swimming lake. There's no beach."

The ride lasts a minute more, and then the rowboat bumps against the shore. Dad climbs out over the bow.

"Just sit still," he cautions. "I'll pull you out." The boy sits tight on the seat as his dad drags the boat up on shore. The boy climbs out and looks back at the lake. Dad wraps the fish in newspaper in the trunk of the car. "Grab the tackle box, will ya, Bub?" The boy picks up the heavy box and carries it to his dad.

"I wish we lived here," the boy says as they walk back to retrieve their poles. "Can we come back some other time?"

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Dad assures him.

I love to do home-improvement projects. I love the ringing of a circular saw blade after it's chewed through two-by-fours, and the scent of freshly-cut pine. I love the way a room looks, stark and virginal, just after the first coat of primer hits new drywall. Most of all I love the way that investing your own "sweat equity" makes what was just another house into Your Own Home. Maybe I should say, I love to start home-improvement projects. And I love to complete them. Sometimes that middle part gets tedious, but when the furniture's all replaced and the last tool is nestled in its place on the pegboard, I feel very satisfied.

In the twenty-some years that I've been a homeowner, I've learned some important lessons about taking on projects around the house:

1. They're never as simple as you expect them to be, and;

2. Even if Bob Vila completes them in half an hour on TV, you won't.

The house that taught me those lessons over and over again was a two-bedroom cottage on the west side of Grand Rapids. We bought it from my grandpa's estate, and most of its value came from the fact that once upon a time it had been Grandma and Grandpa's. It was small, it had one enormous heat register in the middle of the house, and it had been ravaged by countless generations of termites and carpenter ants. It needed lots of work. To me, the place was a bigger and better toy than the jumbo set of Tinkertoys I got for Christmas when I was five.

Upon moving in, we decided the first thing the house needed was a place to wash clothes. Grandma had a wringer washer that hooked up to the kitchen tap and drained into the sink. My wife, who's an automatic-washer kind of lady, had no interest in wringers. Early on she contented herself with weekly trips to the laundromat, but she informed me well in advance that she wasn't going to schlep a diaper pail that far so I'd better come up with some way for her to do laundry at home. We bought our first brand-new appliance, a genuine Kenmore washing machine, and had it delivered to the back porch. It stayed parked for several weeks while I endured pointed reminders that it wouldn't grow into the house's plumbing system on its own. I dug in to devising a plan, which looked to Carolyn like I was dozing in the recliner with an open how-to book on my chest. But I really was dreaming up a plan.

Finally one Thanksgiving weekend I girded my loins for battle. Donning my tool belt, I drilled holes for water and drain lines in a closet floor. The first step was installing the drain line. I studied up on drains and calculated the correct length for the standpipe into which the washer would pump, but I had a problem. The run to the main line was too steep, which would have allowed the trap to drain and let sewer gas in the house. My uncle suggested that I make a "deep trap." All I needed to do was lengthen the standpipe a bit and stick a hunk of pipe in between the two halves of the "P." The end product looked like a plastic saxophone, but his idea, and the trap, held water. Score one for the good guys.

Next I needed hot- and cold-water supply lines. I made them out of schedule-40 plastic pipe, which is a godsend for beginning home-improvers; if you can use a hacksaw and a glue bottle, you can be your own plumber. My wife patiently endured the lack of running water while I tied the new lines into the house supply. After the requisite drying time I turned the water back on. A quarter-second later the house had a new feature; a basement shower! The hot-water line blew apart, dousing me from top to toe. Dripping and sputtering, I very quickly turned the water back off, dried everything out, and repaired the damage. Before I opened the shutoff the second time I waited until I was sure the glue was dry, and again, BLAM! the line parted. As bewilderment turned to naked desparation, I did the unthinkable and read the instructions on the glue bottle. For hot-water lines, they instructed, wait 24 hours before turning the water on. I placated Carolyn with the facts that at least we could heat water on the stove and flush the john, and encouraged her with the promise that soon she'd never have to leave the house with a roll of quarters ever again. She encouraged me with that "you'd better be right, buddy" look.

The next day I tested the lines and installed a new outlet. Finally, the time arrived to settle the washer into its new home. I walked it through the house, rocking it from side to side with thumps and bangs, and wriggled it into its narrow new digs. Our tiny budget proved to be a big advantage as the little washer juuuuuust fit in the closet. We ran our first load of clothes in it, and to Carolyn's great surprise all the new plumbing and electrical work performed perfectly! My first big project was a success. However, like many big projects this one had unforeseen side effects; the steam from the hot water dissolved the glue on the old wallpaper, and it peeled off the walls in great hunks!

Water also played a part in the teaching of lesson number two. One morning in the shower I noticed a loose plastic tile. Soon it dropped off, and several more followed. Those tiles had been up as long as I could remember, so they were due for replacement, I reasoned. And I had the perfect replacement in mind: A brand-new fiberglass tub surround! I picked one with a smooth white finish and shelves for soap and shampoo bottles molded in the corners. It would give that old bathroom a much-desired facelift, and it had a particularly endearing feature. The box read, "installs in one hour." Great, I thought, I'll whip this up and have a whole day to play. On Saturday morning I shut off the water and disassembled the faucet hardware so I could slip the new panel into place.

The words on the box should have included, "...after about ten hours of demolition and prep work."

I stepped into the tub, pulled out my putty knife, and started removing the tiles. Before long I had a small pile of gray plastic squares at my feet. Work was progressing well, but then tragedy struck: I poked my knife in and pulled off a big hunk of waterlogged plaster! It landed on those tiles with a squishy thwop! Disappointment arose like the mess in the tub as the prospect of a quick fix dissolved in front of me. More plaster came with the remaining tiles. I scooped the gloppy mess up and bagged it just before my second trip to the building-supply store for a slab of greenboard. I learned you can't use plain old gypsum wallboard around water; "the code" called for greenboard, so greenboard it was. I nailed it up over the old plaster lath, and before long I had a nice fresh green surface to which I could glue the tub surround. I even managed to measure correctly for the faucet handles and tub spout. Or at least I got reasonably close. But along the way I jumped ahead to lesson number three: A little caulk covers a multitude of sins.

About midnight, I glued the last panel in place and caulked the final seam. Sleep seemed like the perfect reward for a long day's work as I stepped back to admire my work. Everything was installed right-side-up and the shower looked terrific. All I had to do was replace the faucets and I could try it out. My elation lasted for about a minute, then tragedy made a U-turn and hit me again. Because I'd left the lath boards in place the new wall stuck out about a quarter-inch farther than the old one, and the plumbing inside the wall was now out of reach! Joy mutated to horror at the prospect of Carolyn waking up and finding we were once again without water. I needed a way out of a mess, and I needed it right then.

If cussing would have sped the job up I've have been done in a minute. The exact sequence of events is a little murky all these years later, but I think I pulled hard on one section of the piping with a pair of pliers and threaded the faucet stems back in place with my free hand. Somehow I got it back together, it worked, and I lay down that night knowing everything would be fine as long as the faucet washers never wore out...which they did, of course.

All that said, though, I still take projects on. Even though sometimes it's not cheaper to buy the tool and fix something yourself, at least when you're done you've got a great new tool to arouse envy in your friends. And whether the job involves regrading the back yard to keep the basement from leaking or just adjusting and re-adjusting the well pressure tank, when it's all done you can put your hands on your hips, puff out your chest, raise your face to the heavens and shout...

"I am Dad...The FIXER!!"

My heart sank when I saw Arlene from HR standing by the receptionist's desk. I had a feeling that the meeting invitation in my e-mail, the one with no subject, would be bad news. And when my boss joined Arlene, it confirmed my worst fear.

Not more than a month before the merger, I sat in a fine restaurant with my old boss and the programming manager as we celebrated my fifteenth year on the job. What praises gushed forth then! I had improved so much and become such a valuable asset to the department. I'd been promoted three times in ten years, and people respected my talent and opinions. I felt so safe then. Not smug, but I felt secure, believing that I would one day retire from the company a satisfied, happy man.

But that was over two years before.  One Tuesday morning I walked into the office and noticed the atmosphere wasn't quite right. People huddled in groups of two or three, having hushed conversations in front of their cubicles. No one was really focused on work. In fact, nobody was focused on much of anything except a news report printed from a website: "BANKS ANNOUNCE MERGER," blared the headline. Ken handed the story to me. "Oh, shoot!" I shot in disbelief. My mind went blank. How could this happen? I thought. We'd always been committed to staying independent. Who was this other bank? No one ever heard of them; they were some company with a funny name from Ohio.

I sat down in my cube, in the old brown swivel chair I'd named "the Fighting Chair" for all the big projects I'd fought and landed while sitting in it. I felt sick to my stomach as uncertainty grabbed at me for the first time since...I couldn't remember when. There were always good jobs to jump to around town. At least, I thought there were. It had been so long since I'd tested the waters, I didn't know what was still out there, or even if I'd fit in the market.

I decided the best thing was to get to work. I snapped on my computer and got on with my day. But it wasn't just another day at the office. Nor would any day that followed be the same. E-mails from On High and meetings with department heads only revealed that no one knew exactly what would happen in the near future; their best advice was to continue on with our work and stay positive. They'd share whatever news came their way. Right, I thought, just like you shared the merger. Cripes, the news services had the story before we did. Obviously neither side wanted a mass exodus of knowledgable people; the conversion and turnover work would have been nightmarish. Rumors buzzed through the department like swarms of gnats on a spring afternoon. The new company was a sweatshop. Everyone was expected to work fifty-hour weeks whether they were busy or not. The weak, and those who resisted, were regularly purged.

Not long after, projects began to die, one by one as the merger date approached. Work that had been vital to the long-term survival of the company one month ago was discarded like paper from a bird cage. Finally, word came out about what would happen to the staff. Some, whose work was considered valuable to the new company, would be offered jobs. Everyone else would receive fairly-generous severance packages; two weeks' pay for every year of service. In my heart I hoped for a package. Thirty weeks paid vacation! I could goof off all summer and still have money to keep us afloat until I found a new job. That is, if I could find a new job that paid as well as what I'd made. I began to look at my co-workers differently. These people had long been my friends; we suffered through tough projects and easy ones together for a third of my life. Now, they were competitors. The local job market couldn't absorb all of us, and if push came to shove I would do what I needed to do to take care of my family, even if it meant going head to head with people whom I'd helped and who helped me, people I respected and counted myself lucky to know.

It never came to that, at least not for me. The new owners saw some potential in the system my team supported and kept us on basically unscathed. Eventually everyone knew their fate; our once-united staff now fell into two groups; those who had jobs and those who had packages. I couldn't determine which group was luckier. The package people continued on with conversion work until the day before turnover. About that time, all the old bank's signage disappeared from around town and the new company's logos appeared. The new bank's ad campaigns started playing on local radio stations, complete with a jingle from a 60's song. Fourteen hundred people across the state became unemployed to the tune of "Na-na-na-na, hey heee-ey, good-bye!"

Day One for the new employer felt strange, like I'd stepped through the Looking Glass. I had my same old beige-burlap cubicle with the brown swivel chair, the same old computer, and most of the same old team. But the same old computer now talked to a different computer, which had a very different way of doing things. And I had a new identity: I was now E2617735.EM368. After a frustrating day of typing my old ID out of reflex my fingers finally acclimated and I could sign on without difficulty. Our team also had a new boss. She seemed nice enough, but she was a business analyst. She hadn't come up through the software side of the business. Could she understand the development process, and how good work requires thorough testing, and testing requires time? I turned my attention to my new projects, and for the first few months things went along smoothly.

Then came the users from Hell. They came with a funds-transfer project, and we could not make our ideas clear to each other. Even though they were bankers, and I'd worked side-by-side with bankers forever, it seemed that they had no idea about the simple concepts I tried to get across. I might as well have used words like "watermelon" for "debit" and "peacock" for "credit." I tried explaining my ideas as though I was teaching fifth-graders: "Now, to me, 'monthly average balance' means that you add up each day's ending balance for a month and divide by the number of days in the month. Is that what it means to you?" They assured me that it did, but when my reports arrived, somehow they were always wrong. "No," they whined, "we meant that you streusel the pup tent and glove the seal." I tried using interpreters from the home-office staff; it didn't help. Finally, mercifully, the project was reassigned. But my sterling reputation had suffered, and I was mad. I couldn't give them what they wanted if they couldn't tell me what it was! And I was scared. I no longer had the home-court advantage; most of the people who would have given me a break were gone. I knew I could survive the debacle, but I couldn't afford the damage from another one.

The removal of the funds-transfer nightmare freed me to work on my next big project, described as an interface between my system and the General Ledger system. Nearly immediately I realized that this "interface" wouldn't merely be a couple of programs to translate data from one format to another. Upper Management wanted to know how much revenue the bank gave away in discounts. The interface quickly became a job to recalculate every service charge at full price and report the differences. Doing so would be complicated enough; there are hundreds of different service charges attached to business accounts. Some charges were calculated by activity, like a per-check charge. Some were calculated based on the customer's total balance, which meant gathering balance information from different accounts; sometimes the relationships were contained in one bank; sometimes they contained accounts from several. I worked fifty-hour weeks and a few sixty-hour ones to have the interface in its infancy by the project deadline. But I hit it, and it worked. Sadly, it didn't work perfectly; there were always one or two anomaly accounts that required tweaking. At the same time, new banks in the company came on the system. I was trying to build a seven-headed beast and throw new, untested charges into it. It was a project that was born to lose, but I was in charge of making it a winner.

That fall, my wife and I planned a week's vacation Up North. Our son left for college the month before, and we were celebrating the achievement of becoming empty-nesters. The day before I left, the boss called me into a conference room. She handed me a paper, which contained the bank's basic philosophies. Some of them were straightforward, such as "We are honest." Others were more oblique, written in motivation-speak: "We Execute Plus One." She asked me which of them I felt I was having trouble with. I told her I wasn't having trouble with any of them. She then handed me a list of several perceived shortcomings and gave me a week to come up with a plan to address them. I was constantly behind schedule. I didn't get along with my co-workers. True, I had room for improvement, but a lot had been thrown at me in a short time. And some of her "shortcomings" were pure baloney. The only co-worker I had trouble with was Jim, her new hot-shot lead programmer, who took over the lead for the system we'd supported for four years.

I put the paper in my desk. I couldn't get my head back into work. What was wrong with me? I never had this kind of trouble in my life! I sat and stared at the wall behind my desk for the rest of the morning. I knew if I stayed there she'd ruin me, but there was no place to jump. Staff cuts, not hiring, were the norm in most of the big-iron data processing shops in town. A few places advertised for people with client-server experience, but I didn't know an Oracle from an orifice.

We left on our vacation. It went pretty well until Thursday afternoon. I found myself driving north out of St. Ignace thinking about how to process recurring fees. When we got back to our hotel I couldn't even enjoy being with my wife. I had stress like I never knew before; it was about to get worse.

The following Monday I returned to the office and sorted through the 117 e-mails that had piled up while I was gone. Most of them were from people who copied everyone they knew about project questions and answers, mostly to cover their butts in case someone tried to blame them for any reason at all. A meeting invitation to discuss my plan for improvement awaited. I accepted the meeting and got the list out of the desk. I addressed each one as calmly and fortrightly as I could, but the stress invaded my attitude and came out in a strange way: I used bombs and skulls-and-crossbones for bullet points. The boss said she was disappointed. I was disappointed too, mostly that I hadn't had an opportunity to get the hell out of there. She declared we needed to meet weekly to discuss my progress. "The bar's been raised," she said. Yeah, I thought, to club me like a baby seal.

Each week we had our meeting. Each week she told me that I couldn't continue on the way I was. That my work was unsuitable for a person in my position. That I had to get in or get out. I'm scrambling to get out, I thought. There's just no place to get out to! Each week I pointed out accomplishments; they were minimized or dismissed, without exception. And each week I went back to my desk exhausted, sometimes too dazed to work, sometimes nearly in tears. But I pressed on. I dug in and focused on perfecting the interface. I still had a conversion to do every month, and features to add as new banks needed them, and bugs to find and fix. I focused on keeping a good attitude, particularly with Jim. He was just there to do a job, the same as I was, and he didn't need any grief. I accepted his help as it was offered; some of his suggestions actually were pretty good.

I also went back to working straight forty-hour weeks. The overtime was making trouble at home, and I figured I could replace my job before I could replace my wife. Crunch time happens in the IT business. We all understand that, and when it comes we all dig in and get the job done. But my new employers had no qualms about expecting unpaid overtime all the time. I concluded that if they paid me for forty hours of work and I only did thirty, they'd think themselves cheated; paying for forty and demanding fifty, though, was all right with them. It seemed they were only against dishonesty when they were the victims of it.

The "counseling sessions" went on for about ninety days. Two days before Christmas the programming manager sat in on our meeting. I did a quick self-evaluation at my desk beforehand. I got the boss's list out and scanned the items line by line. That one's good, I thought to myself. Hmmm, could do better there. OK, that one's pretty good. Overall I thought I had improved to the point where we could put the whole silly episode behind us and get on with business. I stepped out of my cube with something resembling renewed confidence coursing through me.

The boss pulled out a paper as I sat down. It was a written warning, detailing all of the problems and none of the improvements. The air shot out of my lungs like I'd been hit in the chest with a baseball bat. Your project's still behind and you're still having problems, she said. Of course I'm having problems! I thought. You've given me six months to rewrite the damn system! How I wish now I'd said that out loud. Instead, I pointed out that I'd supported the system for four years, worked with the vendor for seventeen years, and had been programming for over twenty years. If I couldn't handle it, I asked, who could?

"In your case," she said, "almost anybody." My whole body tensed. I could have lept across the table and choked her until her eyes rolled back in her head.

The programming manager asked me what I was going to do. "I don't know," I told him. At that point I was out of ideas. He pointed out that just recently the Michigan State basketball coach gave the same answer to a question about how he planned to improve the team, and he got fired for it. I thought, Well, isn't that the end-game here? If you're going to fire me, why don't you just do it and quit torturing me? I just sat there, slumped over the table. "This isn't me," I mumbled over and over. "I know this isn't me."

Mercifully the meeting ended and I slunk back to my desk. By then I knew the situation couldn't be salvaged. I was playing out the clock. The only thing I could do was to give the job my best effort and pray that a position would open up before the clock struck.

I decided to go down swinging. I kept improving the interface, cleaning up processes here and there, adding new ones as needed. In a given month it processed several thousand accounts. Each new bank we converted brought its own challenges, its own special way of doing things. And there were always one or two accounts that just wouldn't balance. I spent the next couple of months chasing down and squashing niggling little exceptions. Finally, after some major surgery to divide one complicated process into two simple ones, the job ran straight through without any hitches. I was so overjoyed! It was the Friday before my birthday, and I couldn't have gotten a better present. "I'm going to lunch," I told the boss, and I left with my friends. Over lunch, I told them about the meetings and the mysterious invitation for 4:00 that afternoon. "If I had to work for your boss," one said, "I'd rather be unemployed." The boss had a reputation that went beyond tough straight to meanness. It was well-earned. She got her way by bullying her underlings. There were other horror stories, but none that ended with a late-Friday meeting.

We returned from lunch. I planned to start on phase two of my upgrades. When I arrived in my cube, I found a birthday cake from the boss on my desk. She made cakes for her team members' birthdays. It was chocolate, my favorite, with green sprinkles in the frosting in commemoration of my St. Patrick's Day birthday. It seemed a little odd to have it three days before. Would I be around on Monday to celebrate? I wondered. That couldn't have been it. If she was going to fire me why would she make me a cake? Under most circumstances it would have been a nice gesture; it was unsettling that day.

Four o'clock came. I stood up from the Fighting Chair and walked to the conference room where I'd had weekly meeting with my old team for ten years. Even when things went badly I've had happier times in here, I thought as I stepped inside. Arlene and the boss sat down. The boss handed me one last paper: A Notice of Termination.

"We tried to work with you," she began. Yeah, I thought, if you call impossible demands and verbal abuse 'working with someone.' I didn't hear anything else. I just stood up when the talking ended. Arlene from HR walked me back to my cubicle. I got my corporate credit card out of the desk, cut it in half, and handed the pieces to her. Jim came over to talk about phase two. "I guess that's your problem now," I said as I picked up my keys. We walked to the door, where I handed over my badge. As I walked to my truck on a sunny afternoon I felt sad and relieved at the same time, like a dying relative had finally succumbed. I'd suffered a shattering loss, but at least the pain had ended.