I am the son of an engineer who thinks engineers are better at finding answers than anyone else and no one can understand engineers except for other engineers. They all live a tough, misunderstood life. If it they didn’t get paid so much money then I might feel bad for them. On the other hand, if they didn’t get paid so much they probably wouldn’t think so highly of themselves and then they would be more tolerable. Today, I am here to give you hope that you don’t need an engineer to help you find answers—you need me.

Last night Leah and I went to Ikea to buy a Christmas tree (a real one). Ikea seems like an odd place to get a tree, I know. But you can get them at Ikea for $20 and you get a $20 gift certificate (…if you spend $75). We found a cute little tree that will fit perfectly in our apartment. As we go to leave with our tree, Leah asks the guy—Do you have an saw to cut the end? He didn’t. Why didn’t he? Because we bought a Christmas tree from Ikea, that’s why. What the hell do the Swedes know about cutting down trees? I would have thought everything, but apparently not. We shrug and leave.

We have to cut the bottom off (for proper watering practices). I didn’t really want to buy an saw. Other than for Christmas trees, I honestly don’t do a lot of sawing, go figure. There was no Canadian Tire or anything handy around so we pulled into the Superstore, hoping they would have something in their small tool section (conveniently inside same aisle as the automotive, Lego, Christmas lights). All they had was what they called a hand-saw. This was nothing more than a glorified knife. But, I thought it might work. Please note that this isn’t a toothy saw, but looked like it was tipped with sand paper. I am sure the engineers are rolling their eyes. IT MIGHT WORK!

We got home and I threw the tree down on the kitchen floor and took out my new hand-saw. It didn’t work. I sawed about a centimetre down and it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be going much further. The tree sap gummed up the saw and basically was going no where fast. No matter what angle or how much force I applied. I was going to be there all night. This is where I started to think. This is when a genius was born.

I went over to my extremely limited tool box. At this point I was so frustrated I was prepared to take the claw end of the hammer to it, but then I had a way better idea. I took the hammer and a flathead screwdriver out. I wedged the flathead into the dent I had already had and started hammering the screwdriver into the trunk. I pulled it out, moved over a bit and repeated. I did this over and over (only took a couple minutes) and already half of the trunk popped off. Eureka!

I started to work on the other half of the pie. Except I accidentally, not knowing my own strength, plunged the flathead straight through to the other side and I couldn’t pull it back out. I really didn’t want to use a Phillips head because it would chew up the tree. Luckily, lady fortune was staring down on me and I had another flathead. Again, I had another genius moment. Instead of hitting the tree straight on, I attacked it from the bottom and took off whole slices with every hit.

After a few more minutes I had a clean bottom with a few, small peices in the way which (finally) the hand-saw took care of. Do you see my brilliance? Do you see it? I don’t need you no more, stinky engineers!