I am creating this post on a break at the San Diego State University Writers’ Conference.    I attended this conference for some inspiration and to also have the opportunity to visit one of my girlfriends that live in this beautiful city.    We met many years ago in the back of an aerobics class as we tried desperately to keep up with it.   Laughing at ourselves and each other, we soon became good friends, next-door neighbors, and long-distance confidants when she moved back to her home city of San Diego.   So, it is only fitting that the topic of this post will relate to one of our past gatherings.

Some years ago, my girlfriend divorced the same year that I broke off a long-term relationship.   To commemorate this passage into another phase of “womanhood” we flew off to the Bahamas with a group of other girlfriends to relax and regroup.   As expected, the topic of what we wanted in the next relationship was discussed and the one thing this particular friend stated was she definitely did not want a “fixer-upper”.

This term really piqued my interest and I asked her to define a “fixer upper”.   To summarize (and formalize) her definition —- if a woman has to educate and/or motivate a man “to be all that he can be”, then he is a “fixer upper”.    Wow!   This was an interesting “measurement” and totally subjective.    I wondered what type of man I would classify as a fixer-upper.  A man’s work would not bother me as long as it was honorable but I would have problems with bad/uncouth table manners, personal hygiene issues, and dialogue that only contained monosyllables.

I asked my girlfriend what she would DO if she met a fixer-upper.    She told me she would write him off but not before the first date.   I laughed and asked her why.   Her response was “They’re all good for a seafood dinner”.   She asked me what I would do if I met a fixer-upper and I told her I would buy my own seafood dinner.   

Questions:

  Do you agree with the definition of a “fixer-upper”?

  What would you do if you met a fixer-upper?