I fixed the microwave this week.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “this guy loooooves him a good metaphor. I’m sure this is a setup for a discussion of, like, the potential for a conflict in the Taiwan Strait or the looming debt ceiling crisis or something dumb the Big Ten did.” But no, dear reader, it is not about those things.
It is about the microwave.
My literal, actual microwave. The microwave that was broken. But is now not broken. Because I fixed it. The microwave, that is.
I fixed the microwave.
My relationship with the Jenn-Air was unremarkable until last week, when it started to act up. Nothing major; just the occasional Sound That Should Not Be Coming From Your Microwave. The kind of little stuff your car does right before it either breaks down or doesn’t break down.
Then, on Saturday, a bag of Orville Redenbacher, suddenly and without warning, summoned End Game Thor to assist with the popping process. Blue lightning. Zapping noises. Giant flying axes. The whole deal. It was like the Demon Core scene from Fat Man and Little Boy
The first reaction of everyone in the room (me included) was, “welp, time to purchase a new microwave, lest we burn this whole sumbitch down.” After all, microwaves aren’t that expensive, and we had just witnessed the opening of a movie theater buttery portal to another dimension in the current one. There was no shame in this. But then the Overconfident Dad Mantra impulsively spewed forth from my lips before I could hold it back:
“Eh, I’ll take a crack at fixing it.”
Skepticism was palpable. BLUE LIGHTNING, Dad. You’re going to kill yourself, Bryan. MILK, dada (my 3-year-old was less concerned about my proposed adventure).
But I did it. It is fixed.
I fixed the microwave.
In reality, it was not difficult to fix the microwave. A few Google searches, some quality YouTube time, and a few minutes on Amazon made clear that the problem — a faulty waveguide cover — was the likely culprit. It was an exceedingly easy repair. But my children do not know this. My wife only knows this if she is currently reading this, which… yeah she probably doesn’t know this. To them, I performed a miracle of biblical proportions.
Fixin’ stuff is a very specific realm of Dadding1. Most of being a Dad (or being an adult more broadly) is open world creating. It's Minecraft with a mortgage. You can do pretty much anything, for better or worse. There are some general (frequently unenforced) rules and some vague goals. Keep everyone alive and dressed and fed and off the roof. Obtain employment and/or some source of moneys. Use some of those moneys now, but save some of those moneys for later. Stay out of jail and keep everyone else out of jail. Turn this 8-pound screaming pooping lump with no discernable skills and zero innate survivability into a good, decent, educated, compassionate human who contributes positively to society. Then do it again with the next 8-pound lump.
Sometimes this is freeing. Some days, the kids hate what you made for dinner and end up eating a bowl of cereal and a chocolate chip cookie, and you know it’ll be fine. They’ll have a vegetable tomorrow. You probably should have mowed the lawn this afternoon, but screw it, Armageddon is on TNT, and the grass ain’t going nowhere. And sure, your attempt to ‘clean up’ your son’s haircut turned him into Lloyd Christmas, but hair grows back. This whole deal is one long blindfolded marathon through a field of rakes. Everyone gets that.
But if you are like me, dear reader, you sometimes wish you had a little more guidance, and some affirmation that we’re on the right path. A concrete goal. A clear task. And that is where the fixin’ stuff comes in.
Fixing is binary. Either you fixed it, or you didn’t fix it. There are no Bob Ross ‘happy accidents.’ You aren’t finding a path here. You aren’t being creative. The good people at Mattel or Kenmore or Dyson or General Motors already took care of the creativity. They crafted a widget into its final form. That form been disturbed. Your task is to restore that form.
There is also something ironically freeing about the constraints of fixing. There is a finish line. A specific destination. With more open-ended tasks, I often find myself disappointed with something that was generally successful. A woodworker (which I pretend to be on occasion) will always see flaws in his craft that no one else would ever notice, or that could have been passed off as an aesthetic choice. I always notice the problems with meals and baked goods that are confirmed as ‘pretty good’ by local consumers. I want to tinker and tweak and add more garlic (always more garlic) so it’s better the next time. When you’re fixing something — say, a microwave — “good enough” isn’t a slight. It’s the whole goal. You have a place to stop, to raise your hands skyward like Rocky, and declare Mission Accomplished while dancing a dance that makes your kids cringe.
True, there are other tasks that fall into this broad category, such as “assembling things that need to be assembled” and “hooking up things that require more than three cords,” but most of those have explicit directions. Fixing maintains that element of pathfinding. There is nothing quite like breathing new life into a broken thing and declaring yourself the equal of the person who invented it and the mega-corporation who manufactured it.
I don’t know where the microwave — the one I fixed — falls on my list of all-time fixing successes. In terms of skill required for the actual fix, it was barely above the 237-way tie between all of the times I have changed light bulbs (non-ladder division). However, in terms of audacity, it’s right up there. Futzing with a thing that uses large quantities of electricity to power a magnetron is a terrible idea.
I THINK my rankings are as follows:
Dryer, 2013
Furnace, 2015
Other dryer, 2018
Toaster, 2018
Garbage disposal, 2013
Microwave, 2023
Toilet, 2017
Vacuum cleaner, 2016
Garage door, 2014
Some day our kids will grow up and understand what it’s like to find one’s way through life, and will hopefully appreciate the difficulty their parents faced in simply starting each day from scratch and making something new out of it. But for now, I’ll have to settle for an awed, “wow, dad fixed the microwave. How’d he do that?”
Reminder: The verb “Dad” is not not specific to fathers, biological or otherwise. Moms can Dad. Single people can Dad. Uncles can Dad. Wherever a human has an idea, 71% of the necessary knowledge, and 40% of the necessary tools, there you will find a Dad.
My #1 was replacing the motor on the washing machine. There is no #2. There is saving a $800 appliance for $80 after my third part-ordering try then audibly struggling to muscle the belt back onto the new one and throwing around terms like a Youtube repairman, and then everything else I've ever done, which all falls under the heading "Expectations."
That one paragraph might be the most perfect description of what it is to be a dad.