Your youngest daughter grew up tinkering.
In fact, she come by the tinkering quite naturally.
Her grandfather, your father, is likely the best tinkering expert there is.
You have many memories, and even a few pictures, of your dad out in one of his shops creating some kind of small machine or tool that he dreamed up. Like the time that your dad created his own small machine that would pull the silks of the sweet corn ears before they were blanched in the pot of boiling water. By mounting an electric drill to the table and attaching a water bottle brush, your father devised a way to easily eliminate the thin, but annoying silks from the corn ears. When you asked him how he though of that he simply replied that he had seen a similar idea for sale in the back of one of his magazines. He thought it looked like a great idea, so he simply built his own.
Perhaps because she has always been inspired by her grandfather’s tinkering, your youngest daughter has decided to take any auto mechanic shop that she can fit into her busy high school schedule. And while she may be one of very few females in the class, she is also one of the only students, of all the males and females, to be able to identify the different kinds of small and large hose clamps, screw drivers, and a variety of other tools. When other little girls, and boys for that matter, were out playing soccer with their friends, your daughter was grabbing parts and finding tools for her grandfather as he worked on lawn mowers, antique tractors, and any other kind of machine that was not working.
This knowledge of the difference between different kind of adjustable hope clamps got your daughter off to a really good start in her first class in what many think of as the boys vocational tech class part of the building. As your daughter answered question after question about what different kinds of adjustable hose clamps might be used for she was able to think back to the large hose clamp that her grandfather used when he was trying to fix the clothes dryer one weekend. She was also able to talk about the much smaller stainless steel hose clamps that she had seem her grandfather use to replace leaking gasoline hoses on his push mower.
While other students in the class were trying to remember what things were called, your daughter was able to demonstrate that she already knew the fine art of using a screw driver and could explain the process of joining several large hose clamps together for the biggest of jobs. she also knows that in a pinch, you can use small or large hose clamps in place of duct tape or heavy duty zip ties.
At the time, your father’s tinkering often seemed like a reason to get him out of the house. For your daughter, however, that tinkering sparked an interest that is somewhat uncommon and novel to other girls at her high school.