“Get me a crescent wrench.

I need the tool that removes snap rings.” my dad would say, on any given Saturday from underneath the car.  My job was to sit on a bucket and go and get the tools he asked for.  So, by the time I left for college, I knew almost all the tools in my daddy’s tool box.

He made sure that,

when I drove away that I knew a couple of mechanical things about my car.  Where the jack was and how to fix a flat by MYSELF.  Texas Tech was 8 hours from home and he didn’t want me stranded on the side of the road waiting for someone to stop to help me.  He wanted me to be SELF SUFFICIENT.

At the time,

while I was just sitting on that ol’ bucket waiting for instructions, I thought “what a waste of time.”

Now, I look back and think “HOW DID HE KNOW…?”

What he was teaching me was how to take care of myself.   He didn’t want me to have to rely on anyone but ME.  He didn’t want me waiting  on someone to do something for me when I was capable of doing things for myself.  He was teaching me to have the confidence to just jump in and do it.

I can remember once,

while at Texas Tech, my car door handle on my car was broken on the inside.  Every time I stopped, in order to get out, I had to roll the window down and open the car from the outside.  So I called my dad.  He didn’t say, “take it to the shop and I will pay to have it fixed.”  He didn’t say, “I will come up this weekend to fix it for you.”  He said, “What are YOU going to do about it?”

I thought about it a while,

and called him back.  “I guess I could take the door panel off the door and remove the handle that’s broken.  Then, I could go to the wrecking yard to see if they have the broken piece I need.”  He said,”That’s what I would do.”  End of conversation.  And, that is exactly what I did.  The hardest part of the whole process was borrowing the tools to do the job.

If you really want to empower yourself….

Learn how to do stuff.  How many hours do we sit and wait on people to fix stuff for us.  Instead of saying “Can someone please fix the faucet in the front yard because it is dripping?” Say,” Can someone teach me how to fix the faucet in the front yard,”  So, the next time you have a leaky faucet, you can fix it yourself.

I am just going to leave you with one question…”What are you going to do about it?”