My Dad Can Fix Anything

As I mentioned in my previous post for free subscribers, The $1200 I Saved (make sure you read it before this one), I am working on my belief that everything can be fixed. I got the idea from my dad, who also believed everything could be fixed and who could also seemingly fix everything.

While writing the post, I noticed my long list of embarrassing fix-it questions I posed to the internet this week instead of calling my almost 80-year-old father. No part of me wanted to call him and endure the long pauses and the lengthy, detailed instructions. I didn't want to argue while he explained how simple things were to fix, when I’d rather just buy a new one.

The problem is, for better and worse, my dad led by example. He demonstrated how to figure things out in real time. So naturally, I want to figure things out on my own, too. I love the capable and clever feeling. The “aha” or “I did it!” moment. Thus, calling him feels like using cheat codes or a walkthrough in a video game when you are stuck. When you finish the game, it just doesn’t feel as good. (When we were kids, my brother and I lost weeks of our lives to The Secret of Monkey Island on MS-DOS. To beat Carla, the renowned Sword Master of Melee Island, you had to know exactly the right insults to parry hers. We eventually found a walkthrough to help us get past her, but I still to this day wonder if we could’ve figured it out ourselves.)

It’s funny how that sort of stubbornness sticks. Here are a few embarrassing things I could’ve called my dad for this past month but didn’t, because now I’m obviously the fledgling child who wants to leave the nest in this story: