Pane pain

So I was snoozing quite fine when I was awakened by a 6-year-old saying, “Daddy, come quick. It’s awful.”
Now, I did not immediately panic, because a 6-year-old’s version of “awful” can be far different than mine. “Awful” could mean that the red marker is out of ink. “How awful?” I asked, expecting her to tell me about how the Barbie’s arms had been removed.
“Parker kicked out a window and cut his foot.”
Oh, THAT awful. Gotcha. Time to get up.
Turns out, Parker had decided he was not going to sit in the back of the police car and ... oh, wait. That’s not it.
We were at my in-laws’ house in Atlanta, and for some reason I had gotten the good fortune of getting to sleep in that morning. The kids were playing on the ground, and Parker swung around, planting his bare foot squarely in the middle of a window, breaking the pane and putting a nice slice down the back of his foot.
When I came to see him, Parker came sprinting to me. “DADDY!!! LOOK!!!” Wounds are very cool to him.
My wife had already dealt with the bloody foot and cordoned off the crime scene. Fortunately, the cut was more of a scrape, which was a pretty impressive accomplishment seeing as how he had just roundhoused a pane of glass. Glass was everywhere, and I began the process of carefully removing the shards from the pane and cleaning up the glass that was all over the carpet.
After assessing the damage, my father-in-law and I decided that we could easily fix this ourselves. Actually, he decided that. I nodded and kinda laughed nervously, thinking back to the time when the two of us tried to fix a faucet at their house and managed to shut off all water to the house for about eight hours.
But I am not one to turn away a challenge, especially when the challenge is in the form of a gaping hole courtesy of my offspring. My father-in-law took us to a hardware store near his house. It was far from the mega-home improvement stores. It was a large store, but in more of the old fashioned style. My grandfather used to own a hardware store, and I loved to spend time roaming the aisles, finding different oddball items they stocked. While Lowe’s and Home Improvement may bring a sense of quick and easy order, there is something special (and nostalgic, for some of us) about roaming the aisles of a good old fashioned hardware store.
We made our way back to the cutting area, where pretty much any type of material you needed cut was for sale. We gave the guy the measurements, and I then produced a broken shard of glass. “And it’s this thick,” I said, holding up the glass like it was a prison shiv.
“Uh, it’s a window pane, right?” he asked.
“Yes...” I responded.
“Then it’s window-pane thickness. You don’t need that.”
Very good, then.
When the glass was cut, we headed back home with some window glaze and a putty knife, ready to tackle the job. The first order of business was for everyone to assume their positions. Parker – look for bugs. Father-in-law – Guard Parker. Women – head out shopping.
Now before you assume that I am being a chauvinist, let me assure that (a) they had been planning on going shopping before the window incident and (b) encouraging them to go ahead and take part in their trip was a good idea, because they would not be there to lecture me when I announced, “I broke the glass.” (I actually announced it with a few more words than that, words I’m not proud of, but I think most of you can understand.)
Turns out, we had measured just a smidge off, and the glass didn’t QUITE fit into the space allotted. Using a chisel, I tried to knock off a little of the window sill, and had gotten it almost securely in place, save for one little spot. It was at that point that my brain went out for a coffee break because, rather than chiseling away a little more, I decided I would see if glass was bendy. Guess what – it’s not.
The good news was that I was wearing gloves and the glass didn’t shatter, but was rather in two large pieces. I told my father-in-law to continue guarding Parker, while I made another run to the hardware store. When I walked in, the guy who had cut the glass the first time saw me standing there and shook his head. “I think I need about 1/16” less this time.” He asked me if he had cut it wrong. I assured him he had, in fact, cut it exactly how we had asked. A few moments later, he handed me a second pane. On it was a note that he told me to show to the cashier: “No charge.”
I looked at him and started to protest, as I had been the idiot who broke the glass. “Ah, I can get some more pieces out of the broken one. Just don’t break this one.”
Sure enough, this one fit snug as could be. I applied the glaze, and in no time, the window was secure. The whole thing was an unfortunate accident, and I am thankful that Parker was not seriously hurt. The whole thing did scare the tar out of him, which is probably a good thing. In retrospect, the whole incident serves as a valuable lesson – don’t sleep in. It will be awful.