It feels good to fix things
Photo by Wesley Caribe via Unsplash.
I love fixing things. Real things - today, it was the pipes under the sink. One of the rings cracked in the deep freeze overnight and the pipes began leaking as we washed our dishes.
It took a bit of wiping away the wetness and shining flashlights on various areas, but I finally found the culprit and my husband took the pipe out so we could take the ring to Home Depot to make sure we got exactly the right piece.
In less than an hour (a couple of false starts when we first didn't tighten it enough and then had the washer off-center), our sink was ready for primetime.
It's not my first time with the toolbox. I once converted a two-prong outlet to a three-prong, grounded outlet, and have also changed car batteries, fixed leaky washing machine connections, and am always the one who sets up the new piece of electronic equipment.
Sure, most of those aren't rocket science (though I am pretty damn proud of the outlet), but too many people would just throw up their hands and call in a professional to do the job. Which is fine - after all, that's how the professionals make their money.But these people are missing out on the satisfaction of a job well-done. And if the zombie apocalypse happens, I'll be able to replace the car battery when mine dies, so there's that.
Seriously, though, I wish I'd taken auto shop when I was in high school. In middle school, we had to take both home economics and industrial arts, the latter of which consisted of equal parts darkroom skills, wood shop and making a plastic nameplate for ourselves. (The letters fell off mine pretty quickly.) Home ec was cooking, sewing and maybe something else, but I don't remember. Boys and girls had to take both, which was excellent, I thought.
By the time we got to high school, any courses outside our main academics and gym were ours to select. The "smart" kids would never take a vocational course. It simply wasn't done. Of course, in the years since, those vocational courses have been harder and harder to find in high schools across the country - which is a travesty. There's a value in understanding the basics of how to fix things.And we undervalue those who choose to make those vocations their career. A good mechanic, plumber, or electrician is worth his or her weight in gold. It's hard, messy work, but at the end of the day, they've fixed a whole helluva lot of things and can go home knowing they actually helped someone and made things better.
When people ask me what I'm most proud of, I sometimes say it's when I changed and grounded the outlet and didn't electrocute anyone. I laugh and they usually laugh, too, but I'm actually serious.
I flipped the switches on again in the fusebox (truth be told, I had turned off half the fuses out out of fear), plugged in a lamp, and turned it on. I swelled with pride when the light bulb lit up.
I did that.
