My father is a real professional when it comes to repairing things. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a kid’s broken helicopter or the toilet seat. He will mend it with equal determination and dedication. If you walk into his room, you will see a work station filled with broken stuff lying on it. Chipped plates, broken remote, dysfunctional alarm clock and so on. His room is a mini fix-it workshop and he loves playing the part.
He has a huge tool box with a fascinating variety of glues, sprays, screws, washers and tools. Everyday, he makes a point to at least fix two of the many items lined up on his table. Its not that he has to, it’s because he wants to. Of course, all of this is for free but the thrill he gets from it is worth much more.
If the job is big, like fixing the vacuum cleaner then he’ll only do that in a day. In my thirty years, I think there’s hardly been two or three times when I heard him say ‘ I cant do it’ or ‘I don’t know how to fix this.’ Any home repair job is a challenge he loves!
Now, that my kids are growing up, even they know that if anything gets broken, Grandpa will surely fix it. So, the end result is that nothing gets thrown away in our house.
The funniest was when we went abroad to my relatives in the United States. My kids gathered a whole bunch of broken toys from the other children and neighbors telling everyone that surely their Grandpa will be able to fix it. I laughed so hard when I saw the pile of broken toys and had to ask them to return each one to its rightful owner.
Just yesterday, my maid broke a beautiful ceramic plate of mine that I had gotten from Japan. I was devastated. There were as many as six broken pieces so I was certain that it was history now, but my Dad told me that he’ll give it a shot. And he managed to put it all together, so neatly and professionally that you could hardly tell. I was so happy and grateful to have such a wonderful dad!