When it comes to repairing stuff around the house, I almost always have the right tools and I'm savvy enough to fix things.

But, then, my swelled head shrinks by 3 hat sizes every time I buy a new phone or computer.

Just this morning, I tried to tackle a task with my new phone.

The cotton picking thing wasn't automatically moving my photos to my computer. The old phone did, and apparently when I did virtual surgery to remove the brain from my old one and gently transplant it into the new one, a little piece of the brain apparently got eaten by a cockroach loose in the virtual OR.

"No problem!" I said confidently to myself. "I'll just look up the instructions on my computer."

An hour later, having watched 3 videos, having read 17 different sets of instructions, and having not understood a single word, I was cussing at the phone, the computer, the companies that made them, and the world in general. My forehead was sore from banging it on the counter.

On that same counter was an array of cords that the various instructions had told me to use. Each cord had two ends with no two ends alike. USB this and USB that. Itty bitty ends and big gallooping connectors, plus everything in between.

"Woe is me," I would have said, but just then all my photos appeared on my computer screen. I walked to my beloved wife Marsha's piano and ran my finger down the keyboard, hitting every note along the way.

"See?" I said to the computer, the phone, and all the cables. "If you push every button, something good will happen."

I heard gentle female laughter -- two voices--even though I was alone in the house.

Having regained my confidence, I decided to back the car out of the garage and figure out how to turn the radio on to a station that I actually wanted to listen to when driving.

Before I started learning how to operate my car, the Operator's Manual of which is clumsily located somewhere in the screen on my dashboard instead of inside the glove compartment, I decided to call my son TJ to say hello.

I pushed the telephone button on the screen. "Call TJ."

The phone started to ring, and after 6 rings, a strange voice came: "Good morning! This is Hilda. I can't take your call right now, so leave a message when you hear the beep."

So much for that idea. I know no one named Hilda.

I pushed the Know-It-All Button on the screen and spoke my question: "How do I turn on the radio?"

The computer that lives in my car thought awhile and finally answered my question: "I'm sorry, I don't know how to do that."

Expressing my opinion of that answer rather loudly and very crudely elicited a gently spoken response from the car: "That's not nice."

Giving up, I went back in the house to look up the answer on my computer.

The screen was locked, showing me a photo I had taken yesterday. A photo of the garbage disposer under the sink. A photo I took to discover the make and model of said grinder so I could order a new part.

I went to my shop to get a hammer. Not, by the way, to batter the computer, the phone, the cables, the car, or the disposer but just because I know how to use a hammer. It gave me comfort to hold it.

-- Jim Whitehouse lives in Albion.