The Repair That Shaped My World - About Me
When I was four years old, my father and I had a project. He had an old landline phone in the garage, and for reasons unknown to me at the time, he was determined to make it work again. My dad was always fixing things—never one to throw away something that could be brought back to life. That day, I became his assistant.
The workshop smelled of oil and sawdust, a familiar and comforting scent. I remember the hum of the fluorescent light overhead, the way my father’s tool bag sat open, revealing a collection of well-worn wrenches, pliers, and screwdrivers.
I was small, but I wanted to be helpful. He handed me tools and explained their names: flathead screwdriver, Phillips screwdriver, crescent wrench. “Get me the 10mm wrench,” he said. I scoured the bag and found it, my tiny hands wrapping around the cold metal as I proudly handed it over.
Together, we worked on that phone, untangling wires and making careful adjustments. I didn’t fully understand what he was doing, but I watched, listened, and absorbed. Then, to my amazement, we heard a dial tone. The phone was working! I watched as my father dialed a number, and suddenly, my grandmother’s voice crackled through the speaker. We had done it. We had brought something broken back to life.
That moment—standing beside my dad, hearing my grandmother’s voice through the phone we had fixed—planted a seed in me. It was the beginning of my fascination with fixing things, with understanding how they worked instead of discarding them when they stopped functioning. It shaped the way I see the world. To this day, I can’t bring myself to throw away something without at least trying to repair it. A broken appliance, a malfunctioning gadget—these aren’t things to be replaced without thought. They’re puzzles to be solved, just like that old landline phone.
More than that, it was the start of my love for technological tinkering. I never stopped wanting to know how things work, and that curiosity led me down paths I couldn’t have imagined at four years old in my dad’s garage. It’s incredible how small moments like that, moments that seem ordinary at the time, can shape an entire way of thinking.
My dad passed away when I was eighteen, but that day in the garage remains one of my clearest memories of him. It was more than just fixing a phone. It was a lesson in patience, problem-solving, and appreciation for the things we build. Even now, every time I pick up a screwdriver, every time I take something apart just to understand it, I feel a little closer to him.
Some things may break, but not everything has to be thrown away. That’s a lesson my dad gave me, and it’s one I carry with me every day.