You Too YouTube

Before we start, yes…all you wanna be grammar teachers…I know that the headline for this article is far from grammatically correct, but I like it. Since I am the author of this affront to proper English, put your red pens away, it’s staying.

Recently, I was on the very popular web site YouTube. The reason I was on this website was to learn how to fix something. When something stops working around our house, my wife tells me to get it fixed. Instead of hiring someone with years of experience in certain repairs, I head to YouTube to find a video on how I can repair whatever is not working. There’s a good chance it was something I did in the first place that broke the item in question. All I wanted was a little better water pressure in the shower. Where are my rubber boots? I have learned, denying culpability for incidents that caused whatever damage was incurred, is futile. Just try to fix whatever happened. 

I know many people go to YouTube just for entertainment purposes. I rarely do but I make an exception for one item. Each year, around Thanksgiving, I revisit the “WKRP In Cincinnati’s” classic “Turkey Drop” episode. Every time I watch it, I can not stop laughing. Less Nessman, portrayed by Richard Sanders, play-by-play of live turkeys being tossed out a helicopter over a shopping center is pure gold. The last line of the show is the clincher. Station manager Arthur Carlson, played by Gordon Jump, explains why the station’s holiday promotion went bad by saying “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.” It still makes me tear up from laughing. It may be one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

You can find any old T.V. show or clip on this site but I mainly use it as a way of learning how to fix things. Just recently an electric cooler I purchased for road trips quit working. I immediately ran to my computer and started searching YouTube to figure out how to get it up and running. In this case, it was a waste of time. I only learned a couple of things. How to completely destroy the cooler so it will never work again and how to remove the motor and use it as a cooler for something else. For anyone who is interested, I have a cooler for sale. Just a little duct tape to cover the big hole where the cooling motor was, should make it like new. Learned that on YouTube.

I have encountered different levels of competency in the videos that are trying to teach me something. First, there are video clips actually done by the manufacturer of whatever I’m trying to fix. They are very professional and can be very helpful. I had to reset a timer on a sprinkler system in my yard and found a video by the company that made it, and I was able to get the timer set correctly. I also fell asleep during the video. Accurate but quite boring. Kind of like those sex education films we saw in high school. I always thought they would be a little more provocative.

The next type is by someone who really does know what they are talking about, but aren’t very good on the production. Yea, they’re saying the right words but pointing the camera in the wrong direction. I was trying to figure out how to change the headlight on my car and everything said made sense but having the screen filled with the car’s air cleaner while the repair narration went on, did not work for me. It would have been nice to see that you have to be able to bend your wrist like a contortionist to get the bulb in and out of the headlight housing. I had to call someone from Circus Du Soleil…and yes, they wore body tights and strange cat makeup. At least it was entertaining while he hung by a long scarf from the garage rafters while repairing my headlight.

The last kind of learning video I found on YouTube has people trying to teach you something that they don’t have a clue about. Geez. I was trying to learn how to set up a publication in Adobe’s InDesign and I found a video by a so-called expert. He spent the whole time being corrected by someone off camera. I and anyone else who watched this video left the computer not learning anything new and, as a result, became dumber.

I have two rules I follow when I’m doing repairs. First, if it doesn’t fit, force it. If it breaks, it needs replacing anyway. Second, if it can’t be fixed with duct tape and a hammer, it’s not meant to be repaired.

I just got back from the giant box store with some supplies to fix a plumbing issue that has developed in our front yard. I bought a funnel, flexible tubing, a roll of duct tape…never have enough… a couple of sprinkler fittings and a can of joint cement. We have a leak in a pipe near our front outdoor faucet. I can’t stop the leak but I was able to divert it to water the new hedge in the front yard. The plumber can’t get out for a couple of days and I hate wasting water. My repair may look a bit strange but it is doing the job it is meant to do. This is genius at work.

I think my wife videoed me doing the repair and posted it on YouTube as “Turkey At Work.” When I did a search on YouTube, I found it in the list with the WKRP “Turkey Drop” episode. I would tell you how it turned out but I’m too busy laughing at turkeys hitting a shopping center parking lot like wet bags of cement. Look it up, you won’t be able to stop laughing.

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