As promised, I made and installed the screen on Saturday. I found a helpful person at Home Depot who actually listened to my description of what I wanted for a track for the screens and knew where the channel aluminum was. I say I made the screen, but I should add, it isn’t pretty. It is functional. I managed to bend the frame because I didn’t have it sandwiched properly when cutting it with a saber saw. I managed to straighten it enough to work. When I attached the aluminum screen to the frame, it ended up not uniformly tight.
This is where the weakness of the premise of “If you can read …” comes to bear. If the written instructions are not complete or clear, there can be trouble. Or if the activity requires a knack or natural or intuitive skill somehow, instructions will only get you so far. Also you need to have a good idea of what the final result is supposed to be to properly interpret the instructions.
I am very good at reading and following step by step instructions. I clearly remember when I was in kindergarten and Miss Richardson gave each student a square piece of paper. She told us that to make it into a circle shape, all we had to do was take a scissors and round the corners. I followed her instructions with precision. I ended up with a square shape with neatly rounded corners. It looked like a television screen, not a circle. Just about everyone else in the class made something more like a circle. It was obvious to me that they had not followed Miss Richardson’s instructions. I informed Miss Richardson that her instructions were deficient.
Miss Richardson had a lengthy absence that year, so we had Mrs. Carlson for a substitute. I don’t know why she was gone for so long. Perhaps it was a nervous breakdown. Later in my school career, I came to learn that they were fairly common among teachers in the schools I attended.
At any rate, for the rest of the screens, I asked my daughter Rosalie to make them. She is an excellent screenmaker.
