Traveling Down the Yellow Brick Road: Macschooling

I'm sorry this is so late in coming. I went looking for pictures that apparently I don't have. Rather than make you wait further, I figured I'd post what I could.
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In a recently (for me) post, I mentioned that my son has become quite the tinkerer. I wish I could say he's gotten this joy and talent from me but I admit it's mostly from his father. Yes I can come up with some interesting solutions to problems (and patterns for knitting), but my husband... well, he's awesome when it comes to such things. In fact he was hired at his new job to help fix electrical and computer components rather than just replacing them. To say he to tinkers is an understatement.

In fact, for at least a week after I met my now-husband, I knew his as MacGyver. As in the guy from the TV show. Why? Because when he started working at the summer camp we met at, he had a Swiss army knife and used duct tape to fix things. Since then, he has upgraded to a Leatherman knife and he uses other things besides duct tape as well, but the nickname still works for him.

I've asked my husband how he learned to fix things. What I was told was that when he was growing up he started out by going through people's trash looking for electronic things for parts. He would take parts from various "broken" pieces of equipment that he found and he would get one item working. He also fixed Walkmen for people at his school (for a fee of course). During college he worked at a computer store fixing and assembling computers.

So, it came as no surprise to me when my husband came home from yard sailing with a broken Billy the Bass for our son to mess with. I WAS a bit surprised however, when my son got it working in less than an hour. Since that day, my son has started going yard sailing for the sole purpose of finding things to fix or use for parts. He was given a circuits kit for Christmas a couple years ago and he's even mixed parts from that with parts from "real" electronics in order to make new things.

I am a firm believer that hands-on learning is the way to go for many things in life, and this is no exception. Thankfully, I have an electrical engineer in the house to help make sure our son doesn't hurt himself while tinkering. If any of my local friends have any broken electronics, contact us before throwing it out. I MIGHT know someone who would like to play with it. :-)