h//t Steve for this one… Originally from HERE.
There’s something I was thinking about the other day that’s both sad and speaks to how resilient we men are.
And that is that nobody really teaches men how to do most of the things we end up doing anymore. You just end up doing them.
Something breaks. You figure it out.
Something needs to be built. You figure it out.
Something goes wrong. You figure it out.
Half the time you’ve never done it before.
No training. No instructions. Maybe a quick video.
Maybe a guess.
Maybe just standing there staring at it like “alright… let’s see what happens.”
And somehow you make it work.
It’s not always perfect. Often not pretty. But it works.
And that’s the part people don’t really think about. How what a lot of what men do every day is learned on the fly.
Our dads who used to be able to teach us have largely been removed from our lives so we have no choice but to learn by trial and error.
Mostly error at first. Then slowly… less error.
Until one day you’re the guy someone else comes to.
“Hey how do you fix this? Hey can you help with that?”
And now you’re giving advice on something you barely understood yourself not that long ago.
That’s how it often happens. You struggle through it then suddenly you’re the one people rely on.
And then it becomes and expectation. One that doesn’t stop.
Different problem same process. Figure it out.
Not “do you know how?” But “can you handle it?”
And most of the time the answer is yes, even if you don’t know it yet.
Because figuring it out is the skill.
Not having all the answers… Just being willing to take something on and work your way through it until it’s done. That’s the difference.
And most guys don’t even think twice about it… They just keep doing it over and over like it’s normal.
Because for us it is.
This was the way us old farts were raised. We didn’t live in a ‘disposable’ world, where you went out and bought new everytime something broke.
Your dad, or uncle, or grandfather took you out to the garage and taught you how to ‘fix’ the problem.
Today, that doesn’t happen nearly as much. Chatting with a friend my age from the show cars days, he mentioned he’s now retired, not by choice, with a transplant. His greatest joy is getting his son and grand into the garage to help him build a hotrod 32 Ford.
But how many parents today have time or a garage? Or the knowledge to fix something? Those who work in the service industry are probably the only ones…
Or how many kids want to learn? They’d rather play on their phones/computers than learn something that gets their hands dirty.
What say you???
Use it up.
Wear it out.
Save the pieces.
Do without.
Then build another using all the pieces you saved. (I regularly do this with SCUBA equipment. I have an impressive assortment of very functional chimeras.)
As a young sprout, I was always taking things apart to see how they worked. Toy guns seemed to be at the top of the list. Putting them back together was less successful, those darn little springs never went back where they were supposed to. Fortunately Dad was always willing for me to bring a handful of parts asking “Daddy Fix?” As I got older and (slightly) more dexterous the “Daddy Fix” problems pretty much went away. Then I moved on to cars and real guns. I even figured out how to put a Ruger Standard .22 pistol back together without help.😀
Later I became an engineer and moved on to nuclear power plant systems, not sure if it’s a boy thing but there are a lot fewer women engineers than men.
Those who can.
Those who can’t.
Those who won’t.
When it comes to ‘Must be done’, character is fast revealed.
Funny thing that. I am one who learned by watching father fix damn near everything, then watching the masons, ditch diggers, plumbers and so on as they wafted through our life. Did not (yet) own property but all that learning stuck in the noggin. Move forward 25 years and now my 3 kids are growing up watching/learning but oddly, both sons were more busy with sports and then computers, the middle one – daughter, is who paid attention. She is fearless in diving and and figuring out how to. Cars, plumbing, carpentry – no worries.
It is now the grandkids I worry about, they are the most deprived in the sense that almost no one fixes much other than when grandad shows up and helps their dad fix stuff. A throw away society is not one that plans for the long term, convenient as heck but not for when times get tough. I am in no way a pessimist, people learn either by willing interest or hard knocks, all I can do for the remaining years is impart as much of what I can. Does make me wonder how the 3 will split up a 50 year accumulation of tools and parts in the barn 😉
One of the problems in current times is that things are made not to be repairable. One way is sticking an electronic gizmo in something that doesn’t really need it to function. Another is to just not sell parts to fix things.
Computers are repairable. OR, rather, there are problems in software, and some of those are quite fixable.
Now, the computers jammed into random machines are not quite the same thing, as the software that works on those is usually less accessible.
My basic view is that the original essay becomes about bad training (formal schooling) pushing out good training (a lot of other things). The world is wider than any cookie cutter mass production education can entirely handle, and everyone will face that problem if they push themselves to do tasks that are complicated, ‘wicked’, or from a wide range of narrow silos. Not everyone does push themselves.
Back when everthing was done with hand tools, including wars, life centered around tribe, village, family. The advance of technology took generations. Skills and tools got passed down. So many things these days that work in direct opposition to that, not the least of which is planned obsolecence.
Not all is lost. Like anything, info at your finger tips is a tool that can do good things. Decades ago, a friend had a pistol that was malfunctioning. A Chinese copy of a Russian Tokarev pistol. Right. YouTube to the rescue. I was able to dis-assemble and spot the part that was installed backwards.
I like watching Mark Novak’s channel–
And BTW, he’s ex-Navy.
Good point.
I keep finding myself surprised at how many people can’t fix things and it doesn’t concern them.
When I know how to fix things, or figure them out, I have the choice to do it myself or hire someone – if I don’t know how, I have no choice.
Where I live is remote enough that I often can’t just call a professional – either I have to fix it, or I have to ask a friend for help.
At work, the front forwards me the odd calls because they know I’ll either be able to answer it myself, or I’ll figure out who to forward to – same skill set.
This is why I am proud to be an engineer. I even have the degree and the state license to back it up!
The comment from APR is off topic, but this isn’t my blog. So, I will agree with everyone else, “figure it out” was the solution for a lot of knowledge. And we did. 🙂
Watching the Greatest Generation figure out how to not spend precious funds if they could fix things, repurpose things, or do without it until the funds to get it finally built up proved to me how smart they were. It wore off on me. I still try to fix something first, then reuse/repurpose.
Wasting funds buying and rebuying offends me. I find thrift stores/second hand stores fascinating places…
All- You raise excellent points, and no, it’s NOT just about mechanical things… But I still hate AR and 1911 springs. I ‘still’ end up chasing them to hell and gone before I get them back together. And Rugers…sigh…
Arkay- Yep, amazing things in the thrift and second hand stores. GOOD stuff, and easily repairable.
Funny thing is I can remember my mom fussing at me for taking something apart but for the life of me I can’t remember what that item was. I was probably around 5 or 6. I always wanted to know how and why something worked.
Thus my fascination with guns and engines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vHhgh6oM0
The Knack
👍
Flugelman- LOL, I think we ‘all’ did that…
Dad was an Army Engineer. By the time I was 12 he had taught me how to:
lay tile
install a toilet, sink, assorted electrical fixtures
frame a wall then hang paneling on it
Driving lessons started under the hood, under the car, … you get the idea.
A contributing factor is all the laws and regulations being drafted by 27-year-old morons who know nothing and have achieved nothing.
For example, I CAN fix most plumbing issues in my house, but I am NOT permitted to do so because the law says “Only a licensed plumber may …”.
The same goes for electrical wiring. I am an Electrical/Electronic engineer with 40+ years working in the industry, but the law says “Only a licensed electrician may …”.
Huh? Since when does anyone pay heed to such “permitting” required by idiots and their predecessors? I can read the code book and do all the work in accordance with said codes. Asking permission from any local government entity is just delay and aggravation, especially when it is my property (another sore point with local governance, they think they own all property). Blah!
Yep. Years ago when a VCR ‘broke’, I figured I couldn’t damage it any more and opened it up. Shocking how simple those things are when you remove the case. The problem was self evident, a simple adjustment and back in business. Whole thing took about 5 minutes. I wish all repairs were so easy.
Theres a Jewish proverb that goes something like this. “When an old man dies a library burns”. I’ve got lots of formal education but also, I know how to remove and replace a toilet, I know how to drop a tree, cut , split and season firewood. I’ve rebuilt engines, I built a garage and put a 750 sq ft addition onto my house. I’ve fixed clocks, garbage disposals, firearms of all descriptions, killed a dog that was trying to kill my wife, earned a black belt and all kinds of things most guys my age did without complaint. Well, killing the dog was loaded with complaint, I love dogs.
We figure shit out and mostly it works. Im not Superman, Im simply a 76 year old man who grew up poor. There are lots of guys with similar or better stories