My brother Jack and my father are the handy people in the family.
Dad makes tools and can work on any car, home appliance or repair. My brother can fix anything. He went off to study mechanical engineering. He then left a mechanically inept me to take his place for helping our father out with home repairs. Spending a perfectly great Saturday day hunched over an oily engine replacing a head gasket bored me to tears. I can still see the look of disgust on my dad’s face because I handed him the wrong tools frequently. Worse yet is that my younger brother had inherited our father’s mechanical eye plus soon took over my duties. That was fine by me. I am much happier on a computer or in the kitchen. I just don’t have the mental capabilities of fixing a HVAC component. I somehow made it through life without any mechanical skills.I learned to change a tire and string Christmas lights around the house. One day I felt empowered for some reason and decided to replace a thermostat that controlled the Heating plus A/C for the master bedroom. The hardware store worker, who looked a lot like dad, assured me that the replacement thermostat I bought was easy to install. The guy even sold me the right tools to do the job. At home, I had a heck of a time doing it though. I wanted to call any other man in the family to do it. I managed it, but it was horrible work.