The observation has been made that there seems to be an increasing number of people who cannot do certain fairly basic tasks. (Though as another commenter notes, could it be that the people like that are more "obvious" to us?)

I don't know. As I said over there, I tend to be "impressed" (favorably) by guys who know their way around tools and equipment. Or who can cook. (Embarrassing admission: I've long had an odd little crush on Jacques Pepin, even though he's probably close to my father's age. Because he can cook. [And the accent doesn't hurt]).

And I have a certain level of frustration with people who take the tack of "I can't do this!" when it's something that a little training or a little experience would allow them to do - that sort of immediate clamping-down and going "This is too hard!" or "I shouldn't HAVE to do this!" Or when it's a case where trying and failing really isn't that high of stakes, like with baking bread: if it doesn't turn out, the worst you do is throw it away.

I suppose part of that is my background. I got to thinking about it: When I was growing up, my dad did most of the handy-man type stuff around the house. He did the minor repairs, he painted, he built things.

I remember how he and my mother built large, extensive shelving on either side of the open basement stairs: one side was to store canned goods, empty canning jars, and little-used kitchen appliances (like the pressure canner). It also became home to my mother's sauerkraut "factory" (three new-never-used-in-the-lab 5000 mL beakers that she filled with cabbage and salt, and covered with plastic bags filled with water, until the cabbage fermented). The other side, my mother used to store her accumulated fabric, and she also lined up her cookbooks and some craft books on the edge facing the stairs. (I remember many summers, on hot days, sitting on the stairs and reading either craft books or cookbooks: the basement tended to be some 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the house, and we didn't have central air conditioning when I was a kid).

A few years after that, they did similar construction in the garage, to store tools and sporting goods (and so my dad could clear the floor and actually get his then-new Crown Victoria into the garage).

He also did the minor plumbing repairs, and did stuff like rewire lamps. He did the basic car maintenance. And he also wired a manual choke into a balky Dodge Tradesman van that he used for doing fieldwork (and before installing the choke, he used to take the console off, and - my memories of this are vague because I was young and kind of scared of it and didn't really pay attention - use a screwdriver to hold a certain valve open while he cranked the ignition when the thing didn't want to start).

And of course, my mom sewed and quilted and knitted and crocheted. But she also baked the bread and most of the baked goods we ate. And she had an enormous garden - in addition to the zucchini and corn and tomatoes that "everyone" grew, she also grew carrots and peppers and cabbages and brussels sprouts and I think, one year, turnips. And she canned a lot of the excess (even using the pressure canner I referred to, for the stuff that wasn't sufficiently acid to can safely in a hot-pack).

And she was otherwise just generally "capable" in a lot of ways. Part of it was probably that, when my brother and I were small, my dad was still teaching field camp and he'd be gone for four or six weeks in the summer - so my mom had to manage most of the stuff on her own, or with minimal help.

And I'm sure part of all that was the simple frugality my parents had: the idea that if you can do something yourself, and you have the time (sigh, back in those days, before my dad got made a department chair, he DID), you might as well do it yourself, rather than paying someone else. And part of it was probably that they came from that background, in particular, my mom: her mother had grown up on a farm, and married a man, that, while he was a wonderful man in many ways (or so I'm told, I never got to meet him), was definitely NOT handy - so she learned to repair stuff and build stuff herself. (My grandma actually climbed up on her porch roof at the age of 80 to do some kind of repair. It was after that that her grown grandsons insisted she stop, and call them, when something needed fixing).

But I do think there's something more to it than mere frugality. There's a definite sense of accomplishment, of sort of going "Ha!" at the stupid vagaries of life that lead to things like big branches landing on your roof or the wax seal in your toilet failing yet again. Being able to fix it yourself - there's something satisfying about it.

And there's the independence, too. These days, if a repair is one I think I can effect myself (though if it involves natural gas, electricity, or the more complex parts of plumbing, I call an expert), I will do it myself. In part because it's enough of a frustration (a) finding a workman with the time and (b) waiting for them to show up - a lot of them have apparently not quite figured out that in some households, there ISN'T a "housewife" who can stay home all day long, no problem, to wait for him to show up. So if I can figure out how to fix it, I do it.

I think my brother and I were also trained in it young. I remember things like getting small-scale sets of tools for Christmas, and being allowed to mess around with scrap wood and "build" stuff. And I learned to sew (and my brother learned to sew. As my mother said: men lose buttons too). And we learned to cook. (And not knowing how to cook, not being able to cook, is another entire class of helplessness. And yes, I've known a few people who never learned to cook and wound up relying on carry-out or pre-prepared meals).

And in general, there was a sense of "you can figure out how to fix it yourself. (And we were also allowed to mess around with stuff: we were allowed to build things out of old cardboard boxes, or take my dad's broken pocketwatch apart, things like that. Even though they maybe made a mess. And I remember being surprised on occasion when I learned that one or another of my friends wasn't "allowed" to do things like build a hotel for her stuffed toys out of cardboard boxes, because it was "messy.")

(I also remember: my dad, with assistance from a couple family friends, built an awesome "fort" - and it was a pretty permanent one, it was still standing after my brother and I grew up and left home - in the backyard for us).

And so, I just kind of grew up with the assumption that having a Ph.D. didn't mean you didn't know how to use tools - or that you thought that changing the oil on your car was beneath yourself. (If anything, I think doing stuff like cleaning my own darn house or doing my own yardwork is good for me; it keeps me from getting too uppity about being edu-ma-cated.)

However, as several people brought up, it's harder today to be a general fix-it-yourself-er. A lot of things have big stickers on them warning of how warranties are voided if you even so much as open a compartment to have a look. And cars have now gotten to the point where a lot of the old shade-tree mechanic stuff is not possible, or not as easy, any more. (My mom talks about the Karmann Ghia my dad had when they were first married, and how he was so fond of that car, in part, because he could do nearly all the maintenance and repair on it himself). And I think of the old "compression" faucets we had when I was growing up: they would periodically start to drip, so my dad would turn off the water to the faucet, take it to bits, put in a new washer, and stop the drip. Dealing with drips when they come is harder in the newer model faucets, and in recent years, a few times when a faucet's started to leak, my dad's found that the whole thing needs to be replaced, not just a washer.

(And I think that's also true of some appliances: in a lot of cases, it's almost cheaper to buy a new one rather than fix the old one. And I think that mentality seeps into other areas of life; I know people who will throw away a piece of clothing rather than trying to mend it if it gets torn or the cuffs wear. I remember my mother "turning" the collars on some of my dad's dress shirts when they got worn. It was tedious work, but it saved the cost of a new shirt...)

Though, then again: though there are a lot of not-handy people out there, there also is a thriving group - probably not even a minority - of people who are. A lot of my friends are people who "do" something, whether it's quilting or pottery or baking bread or whatever. I tend to make friends more readily with people who have an interest in something involved with "making" something. (And I tend to brush off people who think it's stupid that someone would take months to sew little bits of fabric together, and then more months to handstitch the top to a back, through a cotton batting. It's OK to have different interests; it's not to belittle an important interest of another person).

I also think for those of us who spend a lot of time in doing things that don't seem "permanent" (grading), it helps a lot, psychologically, to have something that does get "done" and stay "done." Whether it's fixing something that's broken, or making something new.

But I do wonder at a mentality that seems to think that fixing a wobbly chair or putting together a new bicycle somehow "below" them and something it's better to hire "help" for. It's one thing to know when you genuinely can't do something (I've injured myself a few times, lifting things I probably should have got help on, or trying to bash out a repair using the wrong tools because I didn't own the right ones), or to hire out a job because you know you won't have time to get it done.

But I worry about trends that lead to people seeming increasingly "helpless." From my experience, it seems that the people who are good at fixing one type of thing (whether it's computers or cars or lamps) also tend to be better at other types of problem-solving and "fixing." And, as I've said, there's a certain pride and satisfaction, I think, in being able to do something yourself. And it would be sad if some people never got to experience that.