The nuts and bolts of writing, but not nuts and bolts

"I won’t even attempt to put together furniture from Ikea," Sue Wunder writes in an essay. Even handling a can opener produces eye rolls from her son.

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff/File
Rosario Robert (left), senior mechanical engineer, and Sarah Finney, research engineer, prepare to field-test a mine-sweeping robot at Fetch Robotics in Somerville, Massachusetts, in 1998.

My mechanical “don’t know-how” is well known in my family and among my close friends. 

During my years as a partner on a small Indiana dairy farm I could mend a fence, but my repairs more closely resembled baling-twine macramé than anything permanent or even logic-based. When partner Charlie came home from a trip, he’d glance about and grab his toolbox before unpacking. 

Watching me struggle with a bridle clip one day he sighed and said, “I’m glad you’re not defusing a bomb, there.”

A new neighbor once asked me for help rewiring a ceiling light. “I have no idea how to do that,” I apologized. “I do,” she said. “I only need you to hold the ladder.” We worked marvelously together.

I was supremely unprepared to assemble the free-standing basketball hoop a friend gifted my son on his eighth birthday, with its myriad stanchions, braces, nuts, bolts, and screws. I took it back to the store and asked for a refund or assistance. One fellow devoted his break time to the task. A half-hour later we slid the thing into the pickup. I gave him $20. 

I won’t even attempt to put together furniture from Ikea, something advertised as “easy as pie.” I tell whomever I pay or cajole into doing that kind of thing that, for me, nothing seems to be as simple as advertised. 

Fiddle under a car hood? Years ago, my then-teenage son Tim dissuaded me from even popping the hood of my car. I could jam the latch in no time, he warned. And now his son rolls his eyes alongside his dad as they watch me handle something as simple as a can opener. 

When grandson Connor was just beginning to write, he fashioned a sign and taped it to my microwave: “Put on cook or defrost,” it read. I haven’t discarded it, even though that microwave has now been replaced. I kept the sign even though I’m happy to say I never actually needed it. But I loved his gesture, which marked the dawn of Connor’s realization that Nana needed help with some things.

And so it’s a surprise when something other than a word or phrase clicks into place for me. My assembly of a simple bedside table with screw-on legs was a triumph the other day. Finally learning how to use the machines to buy train tickets here in Switzerland, where I now reside, was another coup. 

I gloat whenever I successfully work the combination lock for my bicycle – I love biking along the ubiquitous local Wanderwege. At first I left my bike unlocked when I made stops rather than risk being foiled and stranded. It’s an old bike and probably not worth stealing, but I have conquered that lock at last.

Perhaps my finest moment came when a fellow using a wheelchair rolled up to me in Basel. He gestured to me and asked if I could straighten the listing panel supporting his head. I eyed it, wishing desperately that he’d called on anyone else – for his sake. But when I brought the panel upright and swiveled a single lever, voilà! He was back in action. I watched him glide away, my whole day having been made in that one moment.

My lack of practical savvy is nothing to be ashamed of, I tell myself. We all have our shortcomings. Mine lie in assembly and repair. Fortunately I am practiced in the art of enlisting aid from sympathetic friends, family members, and even strangers. 

In return, I offer free editing help and advice, cleaning up and clarifying letters, résumés, and texts. How is it that those “repairs” I make aren’t completely obvious to everyone, I sometimes wonder. 

Then I think of Connor’s five-word instruction on that microwave. And I get it.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to The nuts and bolts of writing, but not nuts and bolts
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2022/0221/The-nuts-and-bolts-of-writing-but-not-nuts-and-bolts
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe