By Hand

Neither my husband’s car nor mine is equipped with spare tires, something I’m told is now normal.

When we got a flat recently, we ended up stranded for the night in Corsicana, TX*, till the tire shop opened in the morning.

I have zero idea how to change a tire and think the world is safer if I don't try.

My husband did once change the tire of a rental car on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, an awful stretch of pavement. Yes, everyone who hears this story wonders why he just didn’t call the rental company. He said when he turned the car in, he told the guy at the rental counter he had changed the tire and the guy just shrugged. Sure hope that tire was on right.

My point is we all seem to be moving away from doing things with our own hands.

It’s not just flat tires. Lots of things aren’t fixable; either they are disposable or you need specialized tools, including, maybe, a diagnostic computer, to even open them.

Children aren’t even taught handwriting in school anymore, which, research shows, may have some broad negative impacts on their abilities to learn.

Weirdly, there are games you can get for your phone where you play at cleaning a house or planting a garden by tapping your screen. It’s not the same.

Patience is required to do things with your own hands, an acceptance that things aren't perfect and won’t come together perfectly, a tolerance for frustration.

And when you are able to fix something, you feel accomplished.

*One thing to recommend in the tiny town of Corsicana: Collins Street Bakery, world-famous for its fruitcakes. The tow truck driver and tire-shop guys, all gruff and heavily tattooed, recommend the cherry refrigerator cookies – hot-pink little confections – and they’re right.

How to Complain

Complain only when you have to.

Some people love to complain. On a Facebook page for parents run by my daughter’s college, one woman complained her daughter had a roommate who was never there. What?! My kid would give her eye teeth to have what is, essentially, a private room for the cost of a double.

When my kids were small, we sometimes went out with other families. There were some parents who would invariably complain in restaurants. They always wanted a different table. Or they’d let their kid order something, and then when it came and the kid said he didn’t want it, order the waiter, with a wave of their hand, to take it back. Of course, they didn’t want to pay for it. All the while, I was praying, “Please don’t spit in my food.”

People who like to complain do it because they want to take their frustrations out on a safe target (like the poor sap working the ticket counter at the airport) or to feel like “big wheels.”

Call me crazy, but I think lodging a complaint should be entirely goal-oriented: you’re trying to fix a situation that’s not right.

Consider what your approach is likely to trigger.

Is it getting you what you want?

The stupidest complainers ever were people in our apartment building who were consistently ugly to the super, the man who decided when, and if, your clogged toilet got fixed. I baked him cookies and paid his teenage son to water our plants when we were on vacation. Guess whose stuff got fixed first?

Be nice, reasonable, sane.

A hissy fit only gives them a reason to not help you.

You can always escalate later if you need to … and you don’t usually need to.

Really, it’s not hard.

When Directions Don’t Follow

The other day, my dishwasher didn’t drain all the way.

I got out the instructions that came with it. (Felt pretty proud of myself that I still had them.) It contained directions on how to change the filter, complete with a diagram.

After suctioning out the gross water with a turkey baster (yuck), I took a look.

The bottom of my dishwasher looked nothing like the diagram. Was I crazy? Stupid?

No.

(Well, not because of this.)

That diagram, in the instruction booklet for my specific dishwasher, was not of my dishwasher.

And those directions about a filter? Turns out my dishwasher doesn’t even have a filter.

There is a special place in hell for the person who threw those directions together.

Today, I had to figure out how to transfer recordings of an interview from an app on my phone to my computer. The instructions from the app mentioned email (files too big), Dropbox (after setting that all up, files too big) and using iTunes (that didn’t work at all, was stymied at the first damn step).

As I, with increasing despondency, dutifully went through the trouble-shooting directions for iTunes, I saw a bit of software I had originally downloaded onto my computer when I got the app a couple years ago. (I don’t use it much.)

It synced the app to my computer beautifully.

But now, when I needed it, why was there no mention, not one, in the app itself or on the company’s website, of this software?

Because that omission wasted a couple hours for me.

For people who write the directions for things: Yes, we all say we don’t read them, but for those times when we are forced to, please take care when composing them.

You are toying with people’s sanity here.