Let me be clear right up front.
I’m not mechanically inclined.
Not by any stretch.
One time after a plumber came to the house to fix a minor issue with the toilet, my wife wondered why I couldn’t have done that.
I quickly responded: “That’s why we have plumbers. Rich (the plumber) can’t write a news story.”
But, somehow lately, my kids have come to attribute these skills and talents to me.
I had done nothing in the previous years of their existence to give them any reason to think this.
My paternal grandfather was handy.
He had an impressive array of tools, all neatly hanging in his workshop in the immaculate basement.
He was the one my parents would call for help because my dad picked up none of that from the gene pool.
To be fair, my grandfather was a do-it-himself kind of guy, never really sharing his handyman knowledge with my dad.
And the same with me.
But back to my kids.
My wife and I were on our way home from a midweek Reading Royals game when our youngest called.
“Hey, dad, the power is out in the house and I can’t figure out the breakers,” he said. “I was wondering if you could help me troubleshoot it?”
We were only a few blocks from their house, so we stopped by.
When we pulled up we could see some lights so at least we knew they hadn’t lost all power.
He said the microwave and some other things in the kitchen weren’t working.
I asked about the refrigerator, but he said that was working because it was on the other side and apparently on a different circuit.
Down to the breaker box in the basement we went.
He had already figured out which breaker was tripped but couldn’t get it to reset.
I pushed the tripped breaker to the right, then to the left.
“Lights are on,” my wife yelled from the kitchen.
I told my son to put something in the microwave in case that was tripping the breaker.
All good — hot water and no tripped breaker.
I told him that he probably didn’t push the breaker far enough to the off position before pushing it to the on position.
With that, my wife and I were on our way home.
And for a brief moment maybe I looked like a master electrician to my kid.
But that false image wasn’t what was important.
That our kids call us is what every parent wants.
It’s a sign they’ve outgrown that phase we all went through when our parents were an annoyance and we, as kids, knew everything.
Eventually we reach a point when we realize we don’t know everything.
But maybe our parents do.
Source: Berkshire mont