“I read your story,” she wrote. “We don’t have anything like a ‘Life Skills’ class. Would you ever consider coming in and doing a workshop?”
I said yes before I could overthink it.
The following month, I stood in a school parking lot with a handful of jacks, some old tires, a toolbox, and a knot in my stomach.
About twenty teenagers showed up. Some rolled their eyes. Some were curious. A few were clearly dragged there by parents.
We changed tires. We checked oil. We talked about what to do if your car stalls and your phone is dead. We practiced saying, “No, thank you,” firmly to a stranger who gets a little too close when they “offer to help.”
I watched a boy who’d never held a wrench in his life break into a grin when he finally loosened a stubborn lug nut.
I watched a girl who started the afternoon saying, “I’m not strong enough for this,” quietly lift a tire, set it on the studs, and step back like she’d just put the moon in place.
At the end, one of the students asked a question.
“Mr. Jacobs,” he said, “do you really think stuff like this is going to matter?
Like, with everything going on in the world? Isn’t this kind of… small?”
I thought about the comments.
The arguments. The strangers online dissecting a moment on a dark highway they were never on.
Then I thought about my daughter, standing in the wind, saying, “We’re good, sir,” while the trucker watched.
“I think,” I said slowly, “that the big things in the world are made of small things like this. The world is a mess sometimes. But you can’t vote your way out of a flat tire. You can’t argue your way out of a dead battery. You can’t post your way out of a kitchen fire. You still have to turn the wrench. Flip the breaker. Pick up the extinguisher.”
He nodded, and for a split second, I saw it—the click. The understanding that this wasn’t just about tires.
So here’s my question for you, if you’ve read this far and you’re still with me:
Is it harsh to expect our kids to know how to do hard, practical things?
Or is it harsh to send them into a world of potholes and dead zones without those tools, just because we’re afraid of making them uncomfortable for an afternoon?
Because one day, your child will be on the side of a road, or in a quiet apartment, or in a job, or a relationship, where nobody is coming right away.
The signal will be weak. The help will be delayed. The app will crash. The safety net will have holes.
In that moment, I don’t care if they ever go viral. I don’t care what the comments say about me, or about you, or about “kids these days.”
I just want them to look at the problem in front of them, take a breath, and say, with steady hands and a dirty wrench:
“Pop the trunk. We’ve got this.”
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This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment and inspirational purposes. While it may draw on real-world themes, all characters, names, and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidenta
