Experience Points

This post is serious enough that it steps away from the intended humor and frivolity I hoped to bring to the internet. My second post and I'm already getting serious. Ugh.

OK, so I'm going to step away from the jokes for a minute and talk about something that's been bugging me. I was filming my epilogue video for my Resident Evil Let's Play and in the process of doing a stunt outside I busted a main water pipe. It quickly started to flood and me and the friend I was filming with were ever more frantically trying to get it under control. After a series of further mishaps we got the water shut off.

Notably I used logic from Resident Evil and Legend of Zelda to burn spider webs as the hole that the water shutoff valve was in was infested with black widows. Which happen to be the one creature on Earth I have complete loathing and zero sympathy for. OK, maybe scorpions too.

Anyhow, today I spent a good four hours outside with my dad fixing the broken pipe. It impresses me that he can do that even though he's not a professional plumber. He was a police officer for 30 years but manages to have a general knowledge of how to repair things. I'm pretty astounded by this. I can nail boards to other boards and I'm a pretty good hand with a paint roller. But as for repairing a pipe? Well i guess I'm qualified to attempt it now. I learned how to cut and fit lengths of pipe, how to use a grinder to even the edges. And I learned that I need to irradiate the shutoff valve with bug spray every few months so I don't get a handful of black widows.

How does someone come by the ability to fix things? Well, my dad is in his 50s. He's seen and done a lot more in his life than I have. I'm in my early 20's, and despite our differences we still have a lot of things in common. But the things he can teach me have seemed to peter off in recent years. We don't talk as much, don't go fishing or go to car shows like we used to. But once in a while, there's an opportunity to learn something from him. In my college years I have learned nothing that helped me to solve the flooding problem. Education is very important, but experience and know-how are pretty important too. And sometimes making dumb mistakes is the only way to learn that.