Sometimes my dad thinks that he can fix a problem that should be left up to a professional.
When I was a kid, a lot of things in the house were not fixed properly, because my dad was working on them. The screen door on the front porch was broken because my dad did not know how to fix the screen. We had problems with the car for months. My dad was convinced that he could fix the furnace and one time we went without heat for a whole week. It was very cold outside and the temperatures were quite chilly. Everyone in the house was hopeful that Dad would call a furnace repair service. He tried troubleshooting the machine a bunch of times and he was convinced three times in a row that he could solve the problem. On the 5th day that we did not have heat, my dad finally broke down and decided to call the furnace repair service. I swear that the repair technician was only in the house for an hour or two and he had the problem with the furnace fixed. After that, every time there was a problem, my mom insisted that my dad contact a repair service. If we had a problem with the plumbing, she was not going to sit around for months and months and wait for my dad to fix it. I understand that he was trying to be a helpful guy, but it was better to let someone else do the job. My dad was a whiz with a calculator, but he didn’t know the first thing about mechanics or engineering.