Gran's skills

A few weeks ago, my wife's mom came by during the day (while I was at work) to squirt some graphite powder into a sticking door lock.

In some ways, my wife's parents had a fairly "traditional" marriage: dad went to work, while mum stayed at home and raised the kids.

On the other hand, when the kids were in high school (and maybe before that), she worked as a lab assistant in a university (or high school?) chemistry lab. And in their household, it was always her -- not dad -- that was the "go-to" person for fixing stuff.


So, last night it rained a lot. And some branch must've knocked down a power line, because we had a power outage.

(Note: People sometimes kid me about having a beltload o' tools. But we were in the living room when the lights went out -- and within ten seconds I was shining my white L.E.D. flashlight about, lighting the way.)

The Girl's response to the power outage: "We need to call Gran. Gran will fix the lights." Not mommy; not daddy. Gran. :)


(An aside: When the lights were all out last night, The Lady told The Girl that Gran couldn't fix the lights -- that some man at the power station needed to fix the lights. [The Lady pointed out the gendered stereotypes in that statement. But, she pointed out, it probably was a man, not a woman.]

So, The Girl took her flashlight, went over to her toy telephone, picked up the receiver, and said, "Hel-lo, Man. You need to come and fix the lights so we can see. Thank you. Bye bye!")


And this morning, we discovered that one of the flashlights was no longer working -- probably due to one of us (maybe The Girl; maybe not) leaving it on all night and draining the batteries. The Girl wanted to take it to Gran, to fix it.


Heh! Reputations. :)


--GG