Loving a wrench in the relationship

The phone rings and you know it’s trouble. Illness? Accident? Worse. Her TiVo crashed. And guess who she’s asking to fix it. That’s right, Scrappy. It’s you. Pronto.

You take a deep breath and begin gathering supplies: wire cutters, Tums and a prayer shawl. Your relationship’s first big repair test. Let’s face it: Girls like boys who can fix things.

“It just stopped working,” she begins. “At the end of ‘The Bachelor.’ Right before the whole rose thing.”

“Since when do you watch ‘The Bachelor’?”

Honestly, would this all-American reality show star have the first clue about fixing a TiVo? I think not. Yet there he stands with dozens of hot chicks vying for his admittedly square-jawed attention. I don’t get it. This guy couldn’t set the timer on a microwave if you spotted him two out of three buttons.

“There. I did it,” he would say.

“No, honey, you set it for 90 minutes,” one of those cute girls would reply. “By that time, the popcorn could conceivably kill us all.”

“My bad,” he’d no doubt reply.

I hate that expression.

Back to my reality show. “So,” she asks, “do you think you can make it work?”

The dreaded question. Personally, I don’t have TiVo. I don’t even have cable. I have a TV with rabbit ears and the funny circle antenna for the really high channels. Of course, most of those channels have static, which, oddly enough, I find slightly more entertaining than “Two and a Half Men.”

I cautiously reply: “I don’t know. I don’t have TiVo.”

Nooooo, sorry! My bad. The correct response? What is -- “Sure I can!”?

Welcome to “Relationship Jeopardy.”

She’ll take “Repairs” for $100, Alex.

“I know you don’t have TiVo,” she counters, “but can’t you try to figure it out anyway?” I once figured out how to put an IKEA bookshelf together, but that didn’t involve complex electronics, a phone cord and a remote.

“The remote’s not working either,” she adds.

Now I’m feeling the heat. If you’ve ever tried to fix an ailing TiVo, you’re familiar with the instruction manuals and diagrams. Oh, did you know TiVo somehow involves a connection to your phone? Can you imagine my panic when I found out?

It gets worse.

When you call TiVo’s “24-hour” help line after hours, you get a recorded voice that asks you questions. You don’t get to push buttons to answer, either. You have to talk back to the voice. At no point in my adult life do I feel more stupid than when conversing with a computer voice.

“OK,” the voice drones. “Tell me what you’re having problems with.”

I want to say something like, “Well, I’m concerned the Dodgers won’t make the playoffs again, and my hair’s thinning.” Instead I dutifully respond, “The remote.”

We go on like this for a while, the automated TiVo man and me, shooting the breeze and eventually discovering we both enjoy swordfish.

“OK, tell me whether you prefer au gratin potatoes or mashed.”

Finally, we determine she’ll have to order a new remote. (She had dropped it on her hardwood floor earlier that night.) Too bad. I was getting ready to work my magic.

Women really value a guy with a high fix-it quotient, and men love a chance to play the hero. I believe it’s a primal instinct, dating to when Eve first asked Adam to install a new printer cartridge. And if you can’t fix it, they just want to know that you’re honestly concerned about whatever’s troubling them. That you want to make it all better. And that you’d do anything to fix it, you really would, if you just didn’t have to talk to the automated voice again.

She makes us a delicious seafood dinner the next night, and we really appreciate it. The voice and me. One and a half men.

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Howard Leff can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.