Some Assembly Required

Throughout my childhood, whenever my family obtained something that required assembly the task was given to my father. He would don a self-impressed grin and sarcastically declare "this is a job for someone with a penis!"

That may seem rather chauvinistic, but I never took him at his words. It was clear that he was mocking conventional gender roles and his intended message was that a penis was not necessary. Er... um... perhaps a more eloquent explanation is that I always understood the graphic humor to be his way of saying that I could do anything I wanted.

My interpretation was evidenced by my routine tendency to follow him into whatever room the shiny new thing was placed, and assist in its construction. My job was usually to sit by, watch as he grunted out "man sounds" (think Tim "The Toolman" Taylor), and hand him the pieces as needed.

Inevitably, I'd revert to my faithful standby behavior of incessantly asking questions. Maybe I'd find a piece I couldn't recognize. I might have wondered how things fit together. Regardless of my reasons, I was typically always curious what the next step was, and what happened when we were done. These curiosities often left me waiting for my seemingly omnipotent father to provide me with the answers. Which he often did, in his own special way.

When he didn't know, or he was running out of patience, he'd finally declare:

"RTFM."
"What's that mean?" I'd ask innocently.
He'd smile and explain, "read the manual."

You'd think, with the number of times this happened in my life, I would have figured it out without needing to ask each time, but you'd be wrong. This came up every time we worked on a project together, and I was frequently left confused, wondering what the F stood for. On some level I must have known, because I never asked him. I faithfully accepted that he would have included it if it was important.

All of those years spent pondering the F out of it resulted in two very apparent lifelong instincts:

The first (and most trivial) is that now, whenever I see the letter F in an acronym, I assume it's an expletive. Then I giggle like that 8 year old girl watching her goofy father run wires along the back of a new computer desk.

More importantly, I come back to this advice often. I think of it when I don't know how to fix a problem, when I'm not sure what to do, and when I can't determine how to go on. When I find myself stuck and incapable of determining my next move, I see my dad behind a cabinet, or under a table, encouraging me to use my eyes and find the answers that have been provided for me.