Sometimes I have to take inventory of what our two teenage sons can – and cannot – do.
The list of things that they CAN do is long, and includes: hanging a ceiling fan, starting a business, tearing down an engine, running a sub-6-minute mile and building furniture.
One of the great advantages of the digital age is that YouTube provides step-by-step instructions to do just about anything under the sun.
However, some skills – like running a fast mile – are more about willpower. Still other skills are about humbling yourself to be an apprentice. Our younger son, for example, has learned to build furniture at the knee of his master-craftsman grandfather.
Still, with every generation there are skill sets that get shelved altogether; either they become obsolete or simply fall out of fashion.