My highly educated and successful wife believes I am well nigh a rocket scientist because I can even replace the flushing mechanism.
I figured out how to fix some simple issues with the Dishwasher, I'm Werner Von Braun.
To say the bar is set low for being "handy" in my house, is an understatement. I grew up with a dad who seemed "handy" in the he had a toolbox, but I don't remember him fixing much. He could get creative around Halloween, but I suspect the basement workshop was really a place to hole up and drink. After he was no longer with us, it was me and a house full of women- not that women can't be handy, but the ones I grew up around, not at all.
(In fairness, some of them are now)
So it was sort of a surprise when, in adulthood, I discovered that I am actually pretty good at taking things apart, putting them back together, figuring out how they work and fixing them. But I keep my humility and my sense of humor around the whole thing; and I sure as shit am not hung up on letting a professional deal with a problem that is above my admittedly limited skill set.
I actually notice the opposite phenomenon, when I deal with "handypeople"- many seem genuinely bemused or pleased that I'm actually interested in learning about what they do or taking on a modicum of DIY stuff around the house; I do think most people, particularly overworked corporate types- either think such things are "beneath" them, as the article mentions- or else they feel like they spend all their mental energy focusing on the one job they have their expertise in, they don't need to know, or care about, how the myriad other little bits and pieces of modern life function or fit together. Like, "I'm a developer who designs UIs and I'm good at it, that's what I do, so don't ask me where my furnace filter is"
That sort of thing.
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