Mechanically Challenged

I’m listening to Car Talk – Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers. The caller thinks he can fix his squeaky brakes by going in reverse real fast & slamming on brakes. His solution reminds me of when I was first married. I was so mechanically challenged that, when my mother-in-law told me that all my sewing machine needed was some oil, I asked, “What’s that?”

I never forgot what a good job that oil did on my sewing machine. So, when my brakes started squeaking, guess what I told George they needed? Yep. Oil.

You see, I grew up with parents who were mechanically challenged. When my mother visited me in our new house early in our marriage, she looked at the unfinished ceiling in the laundry room and asked me why they had taken the ceiling out! At that moment, my life passed before me and I understood why my Aunt Margaret had always gotten so busy fixing things when she visited our house, and why the nails I used in my child-size record player scratched my records, and why the only screw drivers in the house were fancy ones that came inside a little metal hammer.

My husband has taught me that any job can be done with the right tools. I’ve discovered Phillips head screw drivers. I’ve stripped many a screw in my life with a flat head screwdriver, or with a penny or a dime! Drills are wonderful things, too. Now I don’t have to start a hole with a large nail, hammered in and then removed. And as for studfinders? God’s gift to man! Or woman. Or mouse.

Now, at age 62 I use good tools. But if push comes to shove, I also know how to “make do,” with what’s available. That’s what Mom would say – God rest her un-mechanical soul.