Are you a breaker, a fixer, or a brixer?

There are two kinds of people in the world: breakers and fixers.

Breakers cause things to fail. Fixers make things work again or clean up after breakers. It’s as simple as that.

I started using the terms when my daughter went through a particularly rough patch of breaking things. She broke a window to get back into her house after she had locked herself in the garage. In her underwear.

A few months later, she went for a jog and ran through wet cement, much to the chagrin of the workers who had just poured it.

These are classic breaker behaviors.

For a long time, I’ve considered myself a fixer. Admittedly, my fixing is of the jury-rigged variety — supergluing broken ceramics, using a pair of pliers to turn a shattered knob on the clothes drier, or reattaching wheels to a lawnmower with twine.

Don’t try this at home, kids.

But cleaning up breakers’ messes is where I excel. When the cat hacks up a hairball on the loveseat, I’m the person who removes it. (Yes, animals can be breakers, too.) If my wife leaves a half-finished can of Diet Orange Crush on the counter overnight, I drink it the next morning, even though it’s flat and even though I’ve just brushed my teeth.

These are classic fixer behaviors.

Recently, however, I’ve been involved in a few situations that make me think my daughter came by her breaker gene naturally, and not by way of the mailman.

The first instance was last fall, when I tried to move a mattress and box springs from the garage into the basement. The mattress slid right down the steps. The box springs, not so much.

Instead, they got stuck on the handrail. And by stuck, I mean impaled. Granted, this is because I was behind them, pushing and pushing, trying to stuff the bedding equivalent of ten pounds of excrement into a five-pound bag.

By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late. The box springs wouldn’t go down, and the box springs wouldn’t go up. They were pinned, like a butterfly on a slide. Worse yet, they were pinned in such a way that I could no longer close the door at the top of the stairs.

I really needed a hacksaw to liberate them. Since I didn’t have a hacksaw, I used a rubber mallet. This caused the handrail to part ways with the wall, but it did allow the box springs, now completely ruined, to come back up the stairs.

Then last week, while attempting to clean a hanging light fixture in the kitchen, I snapped off the light while trying to screw in a lightbulb. (Don’t ask.) Definitely breaker behavior, and not just because I tripped the breaker in the circuit box as a result.

Let the record show I fixed the handrail on the basement steps myself. The light, however, required a patient brother-in-law who never once laughed at my ineptitude. At least to my face. He is not only a consummate fixer, but also a grade-A mensch.

Because of these mishaps, I’ve come to the conclusion that some people — maybe most or even all people — are both breakers and fixers. I call them “brixers.”

Because some days you’re the hairball, and some days you’re the guy who cleans up the hairball. And on really bad days, you’re both.

chris.schillig@yahoo.com

cschillig on Twitter

Originally published April 21, 2016.