Stuff we learn as we grow older

I now make my living off of stuff I thought everyone knew how to do. My dad never called any service people into our house when I was growing up. I helped him with all the plumbing, carpentry and electrical repairs. If something didn't work we took it apart and figured out how to fix it.

Now I get calls from people who bought furniture at Ikea and don't have the basic hand tools to assemble it. Or their toilet runs constantly and they don't know what tio do about it. I do some bigger stuff too (bathroom remodeling is becoming a specialty) but I get all sorts of calls for little stuff - changing light bulbs, leaky faucets, cleaning gutters, replacing screens in windows...

I'd say we should add a class in basic home maintenance to the normal high school classes but... that's be shooting myself in the foot!

A few years back I had a new front loading washer delivered and the delivery guys made a big point of telling me I'd need to wait 'til my husband got home to set it up as there were pieces that needed to be removed (added at the factory to keep the innards from shifting in transit) and it was pretty complicated blah, blah, blah. Now I'd been going to the laundromat for a while and was in no mood to wait. Furthermore I can read and follow directions AND my husband's really handy and I've been his extra hands for years so...I took it apart. And put it back together. And hooked up all the hoses. Then I waited for my husband to get home because I couldn't get the $#@*! hoses tight enough to stop leaking at the taps (and was afraid to reef on them with a wrench in case I broke something...) but while I was waiting I re-hung the dryer door so it would be more convenient to load from the washer My girlfriends were all amazed/impressed and I'm like, "What? I just needed a screwdriver. Big deal."

This may sound odd, but i do that with language. Anyone who has read very many of my posts knows that i "talk" too much. I write too much, i'm prolix, and put in all kinds of unnecessary thoughts and go off on a tangent far too easily.

However, i have a particular talent as an editor and a technical writer. In my home as a child, we were always corrected by our grandparents for faulty speech. That may sound annoying, but when it is a part of your daily life for as long as you live, you don't notice it, and it doesn't annoy. If we said something incorrectly, we were corrected, and were expected to say it correctly before proceeding with what we were saying--and because we were used to it, we did. If i had said "they was," i would be told "they were," and had to say "they were" before i proceeded.

Additionally, my grandfather taught me to read before i was four years of age, and my father sent us huge parcels of beautiful and expensive books every month. I looked at a list of recommended reading for university students when i was a freshman in high school, the idea being that one could get an advantage by starting early. I really annoyed the "guidance counselor," as i sat there saying: "Read that, read that, read that, read that . . . " There were maybe two or three out of more than a hundred books of "the western canon" which i had not read.

So, i've always been able to make myself useful editing what other people write, and more crucially, doing technical writing to make instructions short and comprehensible. In the days before computers, there were no spell-check programs, and even these days, you cannot rely upon computers to check grammar, or to condense an overly wordy passage to the short, sweet expression of what one wants to say. I've always been able to make myself useful in that way.

A good deal of what we have to do in life--file taxes, fill out applications, read and understand instructions--revolves around language skills. In recent years, i've done well as a business manager for small business. Often, filing your 941 or filling out a workers' compensation form is relatively simple, if you can easily read and follow instructions.

Actually, i don't write worth a damn when it is a case of expressing my own ideas. But i've re-written technical manuals for equipment, and edited other people's writing to great advantage for myself and my employers. I've met PhDs who were obviously expert in their chosen subject, but who couldn't write a short, coherent paragraph.

To this day, i am still floored by how poorly people speak and understand their native language. Like the time when i asked a kid in a fast food place for "half-a-dozen sliders" and he hemmed and hawed and screwed around, and finally asked me: "How many is that, fifteen?"

That example came up just the other day. A fellow I know stopped to buy his elderly mom some doughnuts and asked for a half dozen. The young girl behind the counter replied in all seriousness, "Well, I could sell you six, or twelve or twenty-four." My friend hesitated, then took one look at her earnest expression, and said," Oh. Okay. I'll take six then." When I recently used the expression "It's six of one, a half dozen of the other" I just got quizzical looks. Sometimes I think I'm speaking an archaic form of the language.

I don't know squat about cars -- so I've found a great auto shop with mechanics that I trust. (Although I do know the engine light thing.)

I probably wouldn't have tried to install a new washer, I'd pay the installation charge.

I have a trusted accountant prepare my income taxes.

I don't know how to repair a running toilet, but I do know where I'd find someone who does. (I do know how to put together Ikea furniture. What tools? All you need is the allen key provided and the ability to decipher a single page of indecipherable drawings.)

The older I get, the more I realize how much I don't know. What I have gained is the ability to figure out alternatives and methods to get done what I need.

I can stop babies from crying.

About 80% of the time I can understand schizophrenic word salads.

Tai Chi - your washing machine story reminded me of something that happened recently.

We had a friend who's a mason come in an put up a planter that I designed....sloping down and widening at one end. Then, I went and stained the concrete we'd poured around it a month before. Wasn't hard, got to be artistic with different colors blending, and it looks really great...

The property next door was just bought by a youngish couple who are building a house on it....His dad, Jim, came from upstate NY to supervise (retired builder/contractor) Well, the first time he saw me etching/cleaning the concrete, he asked me when my husband had taught me that...

A couple days later when the project was done, I came home from work to find Mr. Tea talking to Jim and explaining to him how this was my baby, my project.

Last weekend, while tending my flowers, Jim asked me how my husband ever came up with that idea of staining the concrete.

sigh.

fishin...my husbands like that too....he made his living fixing and building things for others...which he had just picked up through living.

Noddy, I've worked with a lot of people with alzheimers...I do better than most at figuring out what they're getting at.

It's like, don't listen to their words....listen to what they're SAYING.

My business partner was/is a landscape contractor; when she was working on a project in LA, a fellow came with a big delivery of I forget what, let's say, tons of large boulders. He wouldn't hand her the paper work but waited to hand them to her foreman, who was busy. He waited, he waited.
The foreman finally got to him, looked at the paperwork and walked it over to her. She then directed him where to unload the boulders...

Here's one -- learning how to buy a car.

I'm like you Tico - the older I get the more I realize how much I do not know. My eight year old on the other hand knows everything (at least according to her). I guess you have to be a child to know so much stuff.

Chai--

Alzheimer's-type confusion is easy because it takes place in a situation. Schizophrenic word salad is drawn from an entire life and much more difficult.