ignorance

When the coffee maker died this past weekend, someone had faith that I would fix it. Another, who commented on the photo, knew where I was coming from. Some even understood my dismay when I encountered the proprietary Oster screws which I used the dremel to fix. I bypassed the faulty switch. It lives.

But another friend pointed out that most people would have thrown it away and just got a new one. I, being the sort of person that I am, looked at him funny. Him, being the person that he is, looked at me funny. We laughed.

I grew up fixing things. There wasn't much I had at my disposal - things were slim - so if you needed something that had broken, you fixed it. You found a way to keep it in operation. And in doing these things, you found out how things worked. Somewhere along the way, you learned how not to kill yourself while doing this and found a comfortable spot between caution and confidence. This is something that few people in the world seem to have.