Aging Gracefully

Interview with a One-Armed Paper Hanger

I caught up with the one-armed paper hanger at a secluded, undisclosed location for fear of giving away his identity. The meeting was based on his schedule because he is busier than most. He might be the only one-armed paper hanger in the world and I wanted an exclusive with him.

When I met him, he was in a wheelchair, which I found odd, given the one-armed paper hanger moniker. How many limbs were not functional on this guy? And his legs looked perfectly fine, even cute, but I didn’t want to press him. Not yet.

His name was Skip. Or so he told me. My first question: What is a paper hanger? I mean, I know the expression, “Busier than a one-armed paper hanger,” but I didn’t specifically know what it meant. Kind of like the expression, “Butter him up.” What is the origin of that? What are we, cannibals?

Skip is a patient man. He has to be in his line of work. He said a paper hanger was someone who hung wallpaper. Well, to quote Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men, “Don’t I feel like the fucking asshole.^”

I remember wallpaper. That thing from the 70s we had in my parents’ house while growing up. Striped and ugly. Lots of it. I didn’t ever think about how it got there. It was just on the wall like paint. I thought it came with the house. Back then, Skip told me, people even wallpapered ceilings. I remembered that too.

My mother told me that in her real estate career, she broke through the paper ceiling. She didn’t shatter it as much as the paper was just peeling off the ceiling. I was still proud of her. She was ahead of her time.

Then came the mirrored-ceiling fad in the 80s. I don’t know who hung those mirrors on the ceiling but that must have been difficult to hang, one arm or two. But why have a mirror on the ceiling, I thought as a kid? A guy I worked with at the mall while I was in high school had the answer. He had a mirror on his ceiling, as guys who work at the mall and are no longer in high school, tend to.

I thought he had a mirror on his ceiling because he liked watching himself have sex with someone. And he did. But he was a bit insecure, so he had a sign on the ceiling mirror that said, “Objects are larger than they appear.” (Ok, I stole that line from Garry Shandling, with great admiration).

Once I got past thinking of jokes to amuse myself, I returned to the interview with Skip. I asked him a series of questions about how he got into paper hanging. How long had he been a one-armed paper hanger? Was this a recent thing or did he make a really brave but challenging career choice, like Jim Abbott, the pioneering major league baseball pitcher, who pitched for the Yankees and Angels, despite being born with one arm? Was I catching this guy at the only moment he was a one-armed paper hanger (brilliant luck on my part) or was this a long-term labor of ludicrousness?

The wheelchair was perplexing too. But I held off on that.

He said that he’d been a paper hanger, painter, and general contractor for 30 years. But a few months ago he had rotator cuff surgery on his shoulder due to all the paper hanging. Thus, he became the one-armed paper hanger. He was enjoying this moment of irony. Continuing to hang paper while in a sling is impressive especially only a few weeks after the surgery. And notably his one arm was his off-hand. I gained some respect for him. Then, I lost that respect immediately when he told me about the wheelchair.

“May I ask,” I said, trying to sound sensitive, “why you are in a wheelchair?” He said that it was unrelated to being a one-armed paper hanger. With a straight face, he remarked that it was a vanity wheelchair, an idea he got from a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode. “It’s something I’m trying out. It gives you some cache,” he continued. Ok.

Then we got into the work. He said he had to limit his schedule and the types of jobs he did to compensate for the missing wing. He was doing painting and light carpentry, which can’t be easy with one arm but has to be better than paper hanging.  The wallpaper business had made a slight comeback recently, but overall few people ask for wallpaper these days. So it was a little wallpapering and a lot of other stuff. And sometimes he had a recalcitrant assistant named Billy, who reluctantly helped him if convenient. Billy Wallpaper, they call him.

My next question was one that was bugging me: When you eat a sandwich on the job, do you have to put down the sandwich every time you go for a potato chip?

He said that he was now asking for his sandwiches to be cut in half, specifically in triangles, and yes he had to put down the sandwich to eat a chip. And he uses his mouth even more now to hold things, so eating gets complicated. A potato chip can get crushed easily by retractable measuring tape. Even I knew that.

So that is the story of the one-armed paper hanger. I guess he wasn’t too busy to be interviewed by me. Probably because he is my sister’s partner.

Outtakes from the interview:

What is your greatest fear?

I have bad dreams of having no arms. I’d go from really busy to really bored.

Did you know that Allen wrenches come in multiple sizes? Ikea doesn’t tell you that.

Yes, Bob Vila and it’s not the size that matters, it’s what you can do with it.

What is your claim to fame?

I think that’s obvious.

If you could choose what to come back as, what would it be?

An octopus.

What is something you can admit in a self-deprecating way?

I wear too many T-shirts with cartoon characters on them.

Who is your role model?

The one-armed guy from “The Fugitive” who framed Dr. Richard Kimball.

Are you really that busy?

Don’t give away my secrets.