Batteries NOT Included

Chapter One: The Many Uses of Duct Tape

Have you seen The Red Green Show?

I have. Hours every night would be spent watching reruns with my older brother instead of on my homework. He swore that everything in that show was information that would aid me in ANY situation I got myself into. This wasn’t procrastination but rather important studying for whatever problem in life came my way.

Whenever I found myself in some sort of trouble, he would always sit with me and ask, “Did you duct tape it?” and he would encourage me to approach any situation with the optimism that the greatest handyman to ever exist always had. Nothing couldn’t be fixed with the right attitude and some duct tape.

Maybe that’s why I love to fix things. Or possibly because my older brother also loved to fix things, and I wanted to be just like him.  Regardless of its origin, I love the art of fixing things.

I remember the day my mother gave me the responsibility of upgrading the lock and handle on the front door. I was 9 and this was my first solo project. I was so excited. Sure, I had helped my brother fix random things around the house, but this was my opportunity to be just like him. I got out my tool case that he had bought me for Christmas the year before, and I set to work.

~

My brother is a mechanic by trade, although he’d always been tinkering with tools since he was a toddler. My mother would tell me stories of him taking her freshly baked bread and flattening it down to make “roads” for his toy cars. “He would always be taking something apart to discover how to put it back together,” she would reminisce.  “He has a mind for fixing things. He’s a great mechanic just like his grandfather.”

I never met my grandfather, well, that’s not actually true, he came to visit us when I was a baby, but I don’t remember that, so I don’t count it. My grandfather ran a woodworking shop with great precision and care when my mother was growing up. To this day, my mother has several sets of furniture he made for her and my grandmother. I would run my hands across the polished wood and examine the intricate details of how he perfectly fit the drawers to the shelves. There weren’t any fancy pieces of store-bought metal hardware. It was all handmade. I would look at the workmanship with awe.

“Your grandfather was a great handyman.”, my mother explained, “There wasn’t any mistake he couldn’t turn into a life lesson. There was always something to be learned.”

I’m sure if he had watched the Red Green show, he would have been just as obsessed as my brother and I. There is something so unique and unparalleled about a handyman’s way of thinking. No task is too large or unmanageable to tackle. They will take any problem and find a way to fix it with unending enthusiasm. I did not have this mindset yet.

~

I can’t tell you exactly how many hours passed before my brother came home from work to find me sitting on the floor surrounded by all the pieces to the new lock. The tears burned as they rolled down my face when I saw him. I felt like I had failed him. I couldn’t get the new lock to work properly and now it lay in several pieces on the floor. Why couldn’t I fix things with as much ease as him? I had helped him with so many other projects, so why did I fail now? Where had I gone wrong?

My brother took one look at the mess and calmly just said, “Did you duct tape it?”. I stopped crying. My mind flashed back to our conversations when I was younger. It searched through the different episodes of The Red Green show we watched together, looking for an answer. He asked me if I remembered the segment called “If It Ain’t Broke, You’re Not Trying!”. I did, but I didn’t understand how this was supposed to fix the mess I had made.

He knelt on the floor and picked up one of the pieces, “When something breaks, you have two choices. You can take a hammer to it and smack it until it’s in even more pieces because you get frustrated, or you can try your best to put the pieces together. Even the smallest actions can result in the biggest change, all you need is a little bit of duct tape to hold something together.”

I looked at all the remaining pieces on the floor.

“Do you want to take a hammer to it, or shall we duct tape it?” He asked calmly. “I can help you, but the choice is yours.”

“Let’s duct tape it!” I replied.

Together, we got the lock put together in what felt like mere minutes. He instinctive knew which piece went where and with what screw.  I was still trying to read step two of the instruction booklet when he patted me on the shoulder and demonstrated the now working lock. “Aren’t you glad you didn’t take a hammer to it?”, he chuckled. I was.

As the years went by and we both got older, I got significantly better at home renovations. Slowly, I started needing less and less of his help, and the gap between us was growing with each project. One night, my mother left my brother to help me with a particular science project that was “right up his alley of expertise”. It was on power flow, and you had to build a small engine and attach a power source to it to complete a function. My brother said that just reading some textbook to me wasn’t going to get the lesson across; we needed Legos!

When I was 6, my brother got me a collector’s edition Lego box set. After school, I would build all sorts of different creations to show him when he would come home from work, but by this point, I hadn’t touched that set of Legos in years. Reluctantly, I agreed and I dusted off the old box set from my closet.

I watched as my brother sat on the floor beside me, building colourful little machines and he would attach the tiny motor to it, and it would move! I was fascinated. My brother was working on his second example, a tiny Lego car, when I had already become distracted with a creation of my own.

“Look at what I made!” I slipped the batteries into the motor and placed it in an empty box. Then I placed the box on his lap. “Open it,” I said with a mischievous grin. “I dare you!”

When he lifted the lid the tiny alarm I rigged went off and it rang throughout the entire room. I rolled over laughing so hard that my stomach hurt.

“Well, I guess you have the hang of it now.” He said with a disappointed tone in his voice, and he sat the box down back in front of me. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room watching TV”, he was already walking back to his room before I could answer him.

I couldn’t put it into words at that moment, but I could feel a shift in our relationship happening. The gap I had been feeling now looked as deep as the Grand Canyon. The once-close bond we shared now felt as thin and brittle as a blade of grass.

My mother told me stories like, “When you were just toddling around, you would sit on his lap as he did his schoolwork by the hour. I have no idea why you were so content to just sit there watching him do his homework as he bounced you on his knee. That was your favourite place to be.” These memories now stung.  

Every night, my brother would disappear into his room to watch old reruns of his favourite shows and new ones I wasn’t supposed to be watching, so I didn’t dare sneak in there to join him.

When my mother was going through my brother’s childhood mementos, she found an old car modelling kit he never finished. This was perfect! I could take it and build it with him, I thought. So that night I marched proudly up the stairs and when I heard him click on the tv I gently knocked. “Yeah?” he called out.

I carefully opened the door and peered in. “I have something I need your help with. Mum gave me this modeling kit and I don’t know how to fit the pieces together. Mum said you used to build lots of them. Can you help me?”

“Can’t you figure it out on your own?” he sounded frustrated at having to pause his program.

“It came with instructions, but I can’t understand it and you fix cars for a living, don’t you?”, now I sounded a bit frustrated.

“Fine, give it here then”, he stretched out his arm, gesturing for me to come closer.

I pressed past the mountains of clothes he had on the floor and found a somewhat uncluttered spot to sit. I handed him the car and the pieces that I couldn’t fit together.

“Damnit!” he exclaimed after just a moment. “Let me see that instruction sheet!” He looked over it intensely.

 “Hmmm, you know what. You don’t really NEED this piece to run a car for a short while, so do you really need it in the first place?” and he threw it over his shoulder into a different pile of clothes.

“Nope! Don’t need it,” I chimed in with a grin.

He looked over my work I had done so far. “Here look, this piece is upside down. The car will blow up for sure if you leave it like that. Gotta fix that. Here you know what hand me the glue and together we can fix it.” He motioned for me to trade him the glue for the engine pieces he was currently holding.

We spent the next few weeks watching TV reruns and building this model car together. It felt good to be close again. I listened closely as he explained each engine part’s purpose to me and whether he thought he could operate the car without it, and for how long. It turns out most engine parts are not needed if you want to go somewhere fast but not far. That felt like good information to make a mental note of.