Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man

I remember my grandfather Joe as a handyman who was always tinkering with things. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of sitting in his workshop full of mostly disassembled gadgets. Somewhere in that time he gave me two gifts that left an impression - a magnifying glass and a magnet. I see now that the magnet was probably the stator from a small electric motor that he had been tinkering with. The magnifying glass opened up a whole new world and I think may have been an early nudge toward my later college studies in optics as part of my Eng. Phys degree.

I don't really see my kids exhibit the irrepressible urge that I feel to pull broken things apart to try to fix them. Does it skip a generation in some sort of recessive gene kind of pattern? Or is it just that their grandfathers left a different imprint on them? I suspect that really they're likely averse to the negative press that comes from failed attempts to tinker.

I'm not really sure how successful Grampa Joe was at his attempts to fix things, but I think I can guess that his reputation was probably similar to mine. Ultimately the risk that some things get broken worse and end up costing a fortune to get fixed for real can unfairly skew one's record. Pulling apart anything electronic these days provokes the gentle reminder from my dear wife Lisa of the Epson FX-80 printer that I fried the PROM in when I didn't get the insulating paper back in place properly between two circuit boards. ($300 for a new printer didn't go over well when we had so little spare cash that we had to hand make our own Christmas ornaments). Or how about the extra $500 for the solvents and new resin for our fiberglass deck coating that we had to redo because I neglected to add the hardener that first time. More recently the ruining of a pair of expensive ski goggles by failed attempts to clean the lenses is only surpassed by the unsuccessful result of trying to refine the process while experimenting on the replacement pair. I liked my son Sean's spirit when he quipped that "oh well at least we know what we can get him for his birthday AGAIN this year".

Failures can leave an indelible mark. My mom claims to this day that the reason why there are no pictures of my younger sibs is that my dad disassembled their camera (presumably to fix it) but was unsuccessful at putting it back together. I think it really is because I was the cutest kid in the family, but that's a different story. I do remember finding pieces of that old camera in a box one time when we were unpacking from a move. My impressions at that time were likely telling - I recall wondering what he found was wrong when he got it apart and what stopped him from getting it put all back together in working order.

Why is it that the failed results get top billing? The ledger never seems to get updated with the several small washer, dryer, vacuum, computer, or car repairs that actually work and save us a few hundred each. No sense kidding myself, it really is about the feeling of satisfaction like the one I got today from figuring out how to pull mom's washing machine apart to find that broken little $10 piece and avoid the $150 service call. Or finding that video on Youtube that showed step by step how to diagnose and repair our failed clothes dryer ($5 part instead of $150 service call).

I still have the magnet. Thinking about it now, I plan to pass it to the first grandson who shows any promise of being a tinkerer.