Sounds Like Dad Is The Thing That Needs The Most Fixing

I am living with my parents. My father has a strict philosophy stating that if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it, no matter how bad its condition, and he always complains when my mother tries to buy new things to replace the barely-working existing ones, much to her irritation. Here are just a few examples of the headaches we’ve put up with.

Example 1:

Our kitchen faucet develops a leak around the base of the spigot, which gets worse and worse over time. My mom buys a new faucet to replace it, but by the time she comes home, my dad has already “fixed” the spigot… by duct-taping it. Because we could no longer turn the spigot due to my dad’s “fix,” we had to use the sprayer to fill the dish tub from then on.

Example 2:

One of our toilets develops a leak. As it turns out, the fill valve has a faulty gasket. My dad isn’t aware of this, so my mom buys a new fill valve and has her older brother, a plumber, install it while my dad is at work. My dad comes home while my uncle is installing the new valve and begins berating my mom for changing it out. He then rips the new valve out and installs the old valve. The leak worsens, but my dad just puts down a bucket and tells us to deal with it.

Example 3:

The same leaky toilet now develops a crack near the base. My mom decides that the toilet has to be replaced and has my uncle come over again to install a new one. My uncle has just removed the old toilet when all of a sudden, we hear a loud smashing sound. My dad has come home from work early again and has just smashed the brand-new, $3600 luxury toilet my uncle bought for my mom. My enraged uncle begins chewing my dad out, but my dad simply screams back at him and my mom and gives them a “lecture” about not fixing what isn’t broken. My uncle then storms off as my dad starts reinstalling the old toilet, causing the crack on the base to worsen as he does.

That last incident ended up being the final straw for my mom, who filed for divorce a week later. She won full custody of me and we moved out of town. My uncle also sued my dad for the destruction of the new toilet and won about $10,000 in damages.

For about six years after the divorce, I did not visit or hear from my father again, until recently when I got a call from my grandfather — the only person to stay in touch with him. According to my grandpa, my dad was moving in with him; the township had seized and condemned my dad’s house after they found that the property was in terrible shape. The faucet and toilet had never been replaced since the divorce and were leaking more than ever before, causing significant water damage to the walls and floor. There was also additional damage from a leak in the roof above the kitchen and several leaky window frames throughout the house, many of which just had trash bags duct-taped over them.

Most importantly, however, there was a large patch of black mold behind the shower in the bathroom, which had apparently been there since just before my mom and I moved out; luckily, we never showed any symptoms of it. The property was demolished by the township three months after my dad was forced to leave it. Incredibly, he still insists to this day that the property was perfectly fine and should never have been torn down.