"R D S" wrote in message
...
I'm provoked to post this after the thread about whether people DIY or not
anymore.
I've been wondering for some time, in particular WRT my own kids (both men
now in their 20s) if their lives have been so much easier that necessity
has *not* bred any variant of invention.
They are so needy and incapable that I had occasionally wondered if they
were on some spectrum or other but I speak to other people my age and it
sounds par.

I've a tome of anecdotes but i'll stick to a couple.

We had* 2 bagless vacuum cleaners at work (me, son, apprentice), one
upstairs, one down. I noted one day that both were downstairs, so I asked
why. The response was that one of them wasn't sucking.
Later I noted that neither had been used in a while, the place was untidy,
apparently now neither were sucking.
So I went off one one about how i'm not the ####ing caretaker, vacuum
cleaners aren't ####ing rocket science and demanded they check for
blockages and if necessary clean the filters.
Neither knew that vacuum cleaners had filters (why would they) so on my
instruction the apprentice washed the filters and put them back in.
He put them in WET and proceeded to use it.

*One has since died, hardly surprising.

There were always some that mechanically incompetent
and with your son, it was your fault that you and your
wife never bothered to explain to him how vacs work.

Mine had me doing all sorts of things from cooking to
knitting jumpers to the sorts of basic stuff like changing
the length of the jeans etc as required when new.

I did all the appliance repair stuff myself as a kid
and learned all that for myself, the parents didnt
know anything about that stuff.

They did quite a bit of reno of older houses but never
designed and built a house from scratch like I did.

Recently, a machine at work is leaking polish on the floor.
I'm ignoring the problem to see what the son will do about it.
Then I prompt.. "why is it leaking", "where is it leaking from" etc. and
finally have to intervene when the best he can come up is to mop up the
leakage from the floor with a face like an injured puppy.
(It's about 30 quid per gallon)

This isn't merely a rant, i'm genuinely fearful for the future.

I'm not now that it makes more sense to replace
most stuff except cars and houses when it breaks.

And some of the neighbours kids that I have known
since they were little preschool kids are now very
competent mechanics etc.