Living With Gramps - Stubbornness Fixes It

It goes without saying that life is full of problems. Far too often, these problems have no solutions. It is in these situations that the only thing we can do is accept things and move on – unless you’re 104. Then you just keep trying.

When I first moved in, the neighbor was mowing our lawn. I had thought I would take over eventually, but I was in no hurry. Then my grandfather wanted to get the riding mower out of the barn/garage/old schoolhouse. He wanted to ride around the yard to check on my work concerning the tomatoes and hedge. He had been walking, but sometimes his legs would tire so suddenly that he could become stranded in the middle of the backyard. It had already happened once.

The mower needed a lot of work. Two of the tires had to be pumped daily and it would not start. My grandfather decided the battery needed charging, but he wanted to test it first. Unfortunately, he could not read the meter and I didn’t know how to read it. I kept explaining the different symbols to him over and over, but he could not keep them straight in his head and kept repeating them back wrong and getting totally confused. This went on for days. Eventually, I reasoned through what things must mean and came up with an answer satisfying to me, but not to him. Finally, we decided to use the charger to fill the battery, but there were two voltage options. Nowhere on the battery could I find a voltage printed. We started with the lower setting first, but days later there was still no charge, so we tried the higher voltage.

During this whole time, my grandfather would go outside to check on the battery right after breakfast, without telling me he was going, and before I had my shoes on. This worried me. His balance was so bad then that it constantly looked like he was falling over. One day, while I was on the toilet, I heard the screen door slam, so I knew he had gone out again. Not long after, I heard a loud thud. I could not identify the sound and wasn’t sure what to think except that I should probably go see what he was up to.

I found the top lid of the battery by the stairs. “Why did you open the battery?” I asked. Then I saw the other pieces. There were shards of plastic on the lawn. It had exploded. My grandfather had been standing right next to it.

“I don’t know what happened. I just turned it on and the battery blew up. Now, why did that happen?” He was completely unphased.

That was only the beginning of our troubles. After washing out the back of the mower (and killing a large patch of grass), I was sent to buy another battery. The mower still would not start. “It must not be charged,” Grampa said.

“Why would they sell an uncharged battery? That defeats the purpose,” I replied.

We argued back and forth for days with him repeatedly ordering me to charge up the new battery and me explaining that charging the old battery was probably what destroyed it. I found a webpage explaining how charging a battery too fast or too hot could lead to a buildup of hydrogen that could explode.

Finally, he agreed to call the repair shop and have it picked up. It was several weeks before they could look at it, but in the end all it needed was some spark plugs and a good cleaning. We finally got it back and it ran great – for one day.

The second day, it would not start. I hated to call the place again and wait several more weeks, so we kept trying. Sometimes it would sputter to life only to shut down a few seconds later. Clearly, we weren’t getting anywhere. I finally caved and suggested we call the repair place. Grampa now refused, claiming that he almost had it working. For five days in a row, he went out and sat on the mower for three hours or more, trying to get it started. There was no strategy in what he was doing. He was not trying different things to narrow down the cause of the problem. He was doing no troubleshooting. He was doing no repairs. He was simply turning the ignition switch over and over and over and over and over and over. Thick, white smoke belched from the exhaust pipe and the grass nearby turned black. The neighbor looked at it and told us there was gasoline in the exhaust and that something was seriously wrong. At first, I kept an eye on him, but I could not stay in the sun that long. I begged him to give up. He just kept trying. On the fifth day, it ran.

Stubbornness: 1

Common sense: 0

For three weeks, it ran fine. My grandfather was able to inspect the hedge, the tomatoes, the blueberries, and more. He started to do some of the mowing himself. Then he started to complain that the steering wheel was stiff and hard to turn. I thought it was fine. He said it needed grease and told me to use the grease gun to fill the joints. The problem is that we were out of grease and he couldn’t remember how to change the canister. He told me to do it. Having used similar contraptions in the past (i.e. caulking guns, Big Mac sauce guns), I thought I could figure it out. Nope! There was no way I could see to get the new grease into the gun without unscrewing the end, and there was no way to screw the end back on without pushing ALL of the grease out of the canister. I looked online for tutorials, but none of them covered this particular design. After making a huge mess and being thoroughly frustrated, I gave up. My grandfather then denied he had ever told me to do it.

Both his neighbor and my uncle took a look at the steering and both said the problem had nothing to do with grease. “There’s something lodged in the steering column,” the neighbor said. My grandfather could not seem to absorb/accept this information and kept telling me it needed grease.

By this time, the steering wheel was nearly impossible to turn without superhuman strength. We just kept riding it anyways. The neighbor even insisted that we do half the yard ourselves to keep the mower loosened up. “The problem is it sits around too long.”

Eventually, the steering became better through sheer willpower and stubbornness alone. Finally, we had a mower that worked.

Stubbornness: 2

Grease Gun Skills: 0

Another time stubbornness worked was with his hearing aids. For the longest time, he would complain that one hearing aid or the other wasn’t working that day. I thought it must be wax buildup and changed the speaker guards for him. This usually helped. I also thought he may have improperly charged them overnight. I inspected the charger after he went to bed to make sure the aids were placed correctly. Many times, I found that they were not. After many months of this, I was able to confirm that something was indeed wrong with them, so we made an appointment to see the specialist.

She tested them, cleaned them, and said one of the wires had moisture in it. She replaced it and it worked perfectly. It was a quick fix and we were on our way, but the next week trouble began again.

The second visit, we were told there was a software problem that had been bothering many other clients. After a quick download, we were on our way again – but next week we had more trouble.

The third visit, we were told the software department had been trying to figure out the problem, but now were sure they had the right fix. This download worked. Stubbornness won again!

Stubbornness: 3

Hearing Aids: 0

Then there were the ants. Ants first appeared on the kitchen counter near the sink. We put out poison and they went away. Then I found them on the floor near the washing machine. I put out another poison pack, which they fed from greedily, but it had no effect on their numbers and soon they were ignoring it. I threw out the old packs, thinking they had lost their potency, and went to the store for more.

Some packs they ignored. Others only seemed to attract them, and every day their numbers increased. I even started to see columns of them in the living room.

After two visits to two different stores to buy multiple packs from three different brands, and at one time having eight fresh packs in five locations around the kitchen, all my work began to have an effect. It took weeks, but finally the ants left. Persistence pays!

Stubbornness: 4

Ants: 0

Unfortunately, there are some things that left both of us totally stymied. Years ago, the phone company put in fiber-optic cables, which do not work if the power goes out, so my grandparents had a battery in the corner. One day, something started beeping every fifteen minutes and we eventually traced the sound to the corner (very hard to do when you have to wait fifteen minutes between beeps). My grandfather had no idea what it was and neither did I, but I was able to read that it belonged to the phone company.

I called them up to see what was going on. I was shuffled through several different departments, since nobody there had a clue what they were doing. It was exhausting. Finally, I was informed that the beeping meant the battery had gone bad and needed to be replaced. They could do it for a fee or I could do it myself by buying a battery at Home Depot. I opted to do it myself.

This turned out to be harder than I anticipated. The contacts are firmly connected to the wall unit, and short of destroying them with a hammer, there was no way to remove them. I tried everything. I looked online for help and found the phone company had a tutorial complete with pictures. Every step of the process was so obvious it needed not be said. I was only interested in how to remove the contacts. Unfortunately, the text contained no explanations, and in the accompanying picture, the person’s hand covers over what it is doing!

I gave up. Who needs a phone during a blackout anyways? I could always use my cell.

Stubbornness: 0

The Landline: 1