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???
Are you Democratic, Progressive, Socialist, Communists, really voting for that Guy with the Hitler Tattoo ?
After Mr. Shit For Brains has Demonized Our President and called him all thoseVile Nazi Names?
Democrats, have you decided to run that lying creep for political office, you know who I mean, the guy with the NAZI TATTOO . No worries as we are offering a service to put another tattoo right on over the NAZI one, The One We named this particular tattoo “Graham Platner’s Kitty”.
So this way you won’t have anything to be ashamed of. This is really funny, and also SO hilarious, that I’m laughing out loud
In fact I think that we should Re-name Graham Platner to “Graham Schickengruber Platner” it’s a good fit for a Democrat Party Nazi that is led by Barack Hussein Obama.
Imagine if it was discovered that Marco Rubio’s middle name was Torquemada or Rudy Guiliani’s middle name was “Mussolini”?
The Liberal Fake News would never let it go of it. .
The Democrat. Progressive, Communist on the Progressive Blog is very Clarify about calling every Republican a Nazi Except the guy with the NAZI TATTOO. Funny Isn’t it!
Use it up.
Wear it out.
Save the pieces.
Do without.
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.