Hands On Knowledge

I think one of the things that I've talked fairly often about with

@tarazkp (sorry for the tag, but it's a common theme in your posts of late! For good reason.. lol) is the serious concern that many people have with the current crop of 20 and 30 year-olds being unable to do something for themselves if they have a problem around the house or in some other part of their world that requires some hands-on knowledge and skill, even if it's incredibly basic and easy knowledge to have!

It was an average night, the little man and I went out for our normal routine and took a walk and did a few things, ran some errands and when we got home, I got to look at my phone since I wasn't doing that while we were driving, for obvious reasons, and saw something that I wasn't expecting but sadly was going to mean it wasn't going to be a relaxing night. The sink was leaking! Lol

When a sink leaks, it's not usually a horrible thing because there aren't that many places in which it could be occurring but when you add a garbage disposal into the mix (or whatever various terms you may call it, erator or what have you) it adds a little bit of complication to the situation!

Garbage disposals, if you aren't familiar with them, are electric motors that hook up to the sink and allow you to put food scraps down the sink and the metal blades inside will chop the stuff up and wash it down the pipe and into the sewage system. With the theme of this post, and the fact that people from around the world may read it, I think it's apt to have to explain it to some of the people who may not be aware of what it is despite having exposure to them in their lives.

The garbage disposals are an incredible piece of machinery to have in a house as it reduces the waste that goes in the trash and although it could be said that it's not good to have it down the sewage system, you take a shit in a toilet so what's the problem? Lol. It's just the precursor to your shit! Granted there are certainly things that we shouldn't be putting down there but that's a different discussion not really in scope for this post here.

What I am driving at with the post, is that I think it's crucially important is to have some hands-on knowledge when it comes to your living space! Being able to simply just figure out a few things about a situation that's going on around the house is crucial. If your sink is leaking, instead of just immediately calling a plumber, why not poke around a little bit and see if you can find out what's going on. It's really not too complicated, honestly! There are a few things you can do to just help yourself as well as a professional if they are indeed needed.

Where is the water coming from?

When did this start, if you happen to know?

Does the water drain at all?

Which part of the various parts of the piping system is the water dripping from?

If you turn on the water, do you see it shooting out of something else too?

In the case of the garbage disposal - does it turn on?

Does the garbage disposal rotate or does it not move at all?

Do you have the basic tools, like a pair of screwdrivers, to screw or unscrew something?

Can you find the reset button?

There are probably a few more to this but these are all really easy and basic questions that one can run down through. Sadly I think many people in their 20's and 30's right now can't do some of these basics, or know how to start in a situation like this! Thinking of someone like my sister, she immediately comes to mind with someone who I know for sure won't know what to do and would just call my dad to come over and fix it, without doing anything besides clean up the water.

Granted I'm not saying that my sister is useless, but it's simple things like this that are crucially important to being a homeowner or even a renter. If you can see a situation like this and be able to immediately perform a few simple tasks then you can save yourself a fair bit of time, money and headaches. It's not easy to find people willing or able to do these types of small tasks! If you call a professional plumber for something as small as this, they might get annoyed at such a simple thing and charge you 200$ just to drive to your house, nevermind fix the issue.

Because of that, one of the things that I made sure to do was have my son right at my side to help me with the situation that we had. He wanted to be there anyways but I think it's so important to have the youngest generations here at our sides, learning not only what to do in this situation but to also be confident in their abilities and be able to problem solve their way out of a situation. My son did really good and he helped me find the proper tools, was asking questions and wanted to help me figure out what was going on.

I am hoping that other parents and people recognize this crazy trend that we are in right now where people are sadly quite soft and useless when it comes to these manual labor tasks, even if they are pretty straight forward and easy. A lot of people can't be bothered to try and figure it out so they just defer to someone else. I think that's certainly a product of the modern college education system, where there is always delegation to someone else and people aren't able to think critically for themselves and be able to figure out a real-world solution to a problem that they are faced with.

With my son and his generation that is coming up in the world, I am a huge advocate of the kids doing and learning everything in this realm because as it stands right now, there is massive economic opportunity in this realm that we live in right now, with people not knowing how to do these things. Can we turn it around so that we leave our children better off than we see others right now? That's to be seen I guess but I know that I'm definitely trying to do as much of that as I can, as I was taught and exposed to the same things as a kid with my dad. I know that it was an important factor that my dad was a tradesman, who does all kinds of things besides the specific trade that he calls his craft. This type of variability is important to be able to do not in just our home life but in the professional life as well!

Being able to wear many hats is such a crucial skill that I am hoping we can have a resurgence on. I know that a bunch of the IT people that I work with wouldn't have even bothered to figure out what I just did, the specialization of society is a strength but also a considerable weakness that we need to overcome in my opinion!