Scrap Mettle (8.13.25)
What Becomes of the Broken Parted?
I enjoy visiting the local Staples (for folks outside the U.S., Staples is a national chain store that sells office supplies – computers, peripherals, paper, pens, notebooks, that sort of thing). We go every few weeks to drop off our Amazon returns at the shipping counter. From time to time I might browse the aisles, scan for discounts and try the office chairs, but my big thing is checking out the recycling cart, where fellow customers dump unwanted electronics. There is all manner of throwaway flotsam, including tatty flip phones, broken printers, and, reliably, tangled nests of random cables. Occasionally, someone will drop off a Chromebook or laptop. I always pick those up, particularly if the matching charger has been dumped along with the unit.
Whenever such treasures present themselves, a sentiment similar to buying someone a surprise gift bubbles up on the ride home. The carry bag of castoffs is almost always intended for younger son. He enjoys refurbishing old computers and either gifts or donates them to others, trades them to build his collection, or uses them as guinea pigs for hands-on learning. He is a politics/ philosophy/ economics major, but this summer he’s been spending time picking up Python and learning how to compile Linux from source. I’m always curious to find out his reaction: is it a collector’s item (“Pre-Lenovo ThinkPad: Sweet!”), an exciting new project (“Hmm, can you install Arch Linux on a Chromebook?”), or a dud (“Oh that’s useless, bring it back”).
I recently brought home an early generation Sony Vaio ultraportable laptop: he was visibly energized examining its proprietary features and distinctive two-tone design language. But the ancient Windows Vista-era Dell that accompanied the haul was what drew his strongest interest. It was in exceptionally fine condition for such an old computer, and had both a decent processor and a generous hardware configuration. I was adroitly informed that this made it a strong candidate for a potential “light” Linux build. One of the challenges he relishes is how to get an older computer serviceable for simple day to day tasks, working off a shoestring of memory and a sliver of computing power. Often, this involves experimenting with different Linux setups to strike a good balance between functionality and speed (as modern-day Windows and Mac operating systems are simply too demanding to run on old computers). But the first step, of course, is to make sure it runs.
To that end, we were lucky to find a compatible power adapter from among his spare parts. He plugged it in, but the poor thing couldn’t bring itself to boot, instead dropping to an error light right away. Not to worry, I was advised, this could be easily remedied. Several rounds of troubleshooting ensued. First, we sent about $15 to Amazon for 2 new RAM chips. Nope. Then, $10 to eBay for a new CMOS battery. Still no good. He researched further and decided it was worth risking $13 on a NOS (new-old-stock) motherboard, also courtesy of eBay. That was the easy part. The arrival of the motherboard a long week and two days later was met with cheers, followed by the news that doing the swap heralded a full tear down of the Dell, all the way to its proverbial ABS plastic studs, as it were. But offsetting the stomach churn of a daunting task was a trickle of words every father longs to hear:
“Dad, this might be hard. Let’s work on this together.”
What followed was several evenings of carefully unscrewing, unclipping, and removing layer after layer of a laptop that first saw use before he learned to walk. Never mind that it is worth virtually nothing. Its pristine condition demanded handling with care, so as not to scratch or dent the chassis more than absolutely necessary. This proved quite the challenge, given the number of obstacles hindering the pathway to complete deconstruction. RAM backplate. Battery pack. CD drive. Hard drive. WiFi transmitter. Speakers. Control panel. Power port. Screen hinges. GPU. Heat sink. There’s a lot of stuff crammed into a laptop.
I forget the name of the inviolable principle of engineering that demands that 11 different types of screws be used to secure the 63 anchor points that hold together a Dell laptop. But there must be one, for such a fiendish memory puzzle of which screw goes where to have been birthed into existence. As each component was patiently and lovingly removed, its corresponding screws were prudently and diligently stored with the care one uses to handle fissile material. For example, these screws go into that Tupperware, those screws go onto that bottlecap, hold on now, how about these, yes that old Post-It should work, just put them on the sticky part…and let’s just try to keep track of what screw goes where.
Of course, being the consummate amateurs that we were, we didn’t label them along the way. It was only halfway into the labyrinth that we realized this was no child’s maze, and by then it was too late to remember what we had done, or to bother making up for it, since we were “almost there”. Well, regrettably, we were “almost there” for a long time, measured in dozens more screws, carefully prised-apart locking tabs, and oddly-shaped computer bits, now stacked, and strewn, and spilled over, asserting eminent domain over more and more of the dining table’s real estate.
Piece after piece, we proceeded, until finally, at long last, there she was, TMAB, The Mother of All Boards. We paused to take in the moment, for all that stood in our way was seven more screws (albeit of four different varieties).
That is, seven more screws and an utterly frustrating 70 minutes trying to figure out what the &@(#!% was stopping it from coming off the base plate.
Friends, let me tell you something. With all seriousness, I tell you this. If you ever decide to do a full teardown of a 2008 Dell Latitude E4300, pop the blank dummy in the SD card slot out before you try to remove the motherboard. Because leaving that tiny piece of plastic in there invokes an unholy molecular bond the incantations of which are lost to the annals of medieval alchemy. And so out, motherboard of old, and in, motherboard of new-old-stock. Hopefully, we didn’t fry either or both of them during the 70 minutes we spent hanging out at Basement 5 of Dante’s.
Shockingly, putting it back together went rather smoothly and, defying common wisdom, much more quickly than taking it all apart. In spite of our haphazard storage system, we were able to mostly guess our way to using the right screws despite having disassembled it over the course of several evenings. We did miss one mounting point, but when I woke up the next morning we had not yet been teleported to the parallel universe in which my cats feed themselves, so I think the laws of the universe somehow held. (But if I’m typing this in English and you’re reading it in Klingon, let me know.)
At last, the moment we had been waiting for. RAM upgrade: check. CMOS replacement: check. New motherboard: check. AC adapter: ready to go. Power on: and…nothing. Wait, hold on, there’s a beep, that’s new. Those lights are flashing, that’s promising, yes. But no bootup screen, no BIOS prompt. And then, confusion. Checking with ChatGPT ensues. Nope, no luck. There’s a new flashing light pattern indicating a different error. For all intents and purposes, still dead. We looked at each other, and shrugged. Quietly, we packed away our tools, put away the work mat, put away the laptop. A little disappointing, and not sure what might come next. We’ve more or less exhausted all the leads we had. Maybe that screw made all the difference after all, like the speck of dust on my kitchen window that stops my house from falling over. We’ll never know. That is, until we figure out the next thing to try, then I’ll make sure that screw goes right back from whence it cometh.
You might be asking, what was the point of all this? Is there a point to all this? After all, all we have to show for it is three evenings lost to the sands of time, a pretty black paperweight (slightly more scratched than before) and a $38 (before tax) trio of line items on my credit card that I’m never getting back. That’s at least two good Chipotle barbacoa burritos right there (measured in NYC dollars; three burritos anywhere else in the country).
Still, as the Mastercard ads used to go, some things were priceless:
The invitation: “Want to help me, Dad?”
The process: “I know Dad, let’s try this instead.”
The end: “I know it didn’t work but I’m glad we tried it. Thank you for helping me.”
Parents, school is coming around again, which means new adventures and new experiences for our kids. On the surface, parenthood sometimes seems like an unceasing calendar of schoolwork, soccer practice and saxophone lessons, coupled with coaching and cajoling, peppered with planning and pleading. But beneath all of it, what people may not see, is how concern morphs to conflict, how aspirations are weighted by anxieties, how blossoming is interspersed by buffeting and billowing. It is elusive, exhausting, and endless.
We parents are, after all, only human, and so we all have limits. But the doctor never told us that having kids comes with the unwanted gift of discovering too quickly what those limits are. In my case, I didn’t always find the way to be there for my boys when they needed me. Sometimes I was there when they needed me, but not in the ways they needed me. I did not have the wisdom, or humility, to know how. As I try to make up for some of the ways I failed to meet their needs in the past, I am finding that the interest rate on those short payments is mighty steep, that barriers that were erected long ago do not always come down so easily. When I find myself discouraged, I look to my faith, and draw lessons from a growing understanding of God’s fatherly love for me. If you will allow, I would like to share them with you.
First, parental concern mirrors God’s profound empathy for us. Whether they are aged two, or twenty, or two times twenty, our kids need us in ways that we don’t know, and could not possibly know. Our bond is so deep, our awareness of them so intrinsic, that it defies description. We cannot see into their minds; indeed, sometimes they cannot even see into their own. Yet somehow, when they struggle, when they are troubled, we know. Just as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, knows and feels our pain, it takes almost nothing to transport us right there, to be beside them in their suffering.
Notwithstanding this, because we are imperfect, our parental instincts are prone to corruption. All parents have experienced that fierce, unflinching, sacrificial love that only a parent can have for their child – that willingness to put aside our own fears and fight past our own shortcomings to do anything, everything, even the unimaginable, to help our child. But in order to bring healing to pain, such surging, desperate love must thread an impossible needle: to be ever at the ready, yet still respect a child’s agency, to allow them to grow, to nurture rather than to suffocate. This is not easy, but we can pattern our approach after His. To be gentle, yet jealous, protective, yet restrained.
When we see our children hurting, we are biased to action. But sometimes the most helpful thing we can do is simply to stand still, anchored and strong, to be there for them to lean on (and perhaps, to fall back on). You might think the tricky part is the standing still. That’s hard enough, but it’s not. It’s them knowing that we are there to lean on in the first place. If we don’t show up today, they won’t expect us to show up tomorrow, and they will find something else to lean on. We all want to be there for them in the easy moments – the happy days, the victories, the milestones. And of course, we need to be there in the tough moments – the disappointments, the stumbles, the falls. But we especially need to be there when they doubt us, when their backs are turned to us, when our affection is returned with unkind words, scowls and eyerolls. They are at once flawed, indifferent, ungrateful…and yet still ours (just as in spite of our shortcomings, we are still His). Faced with such trying circumstances, drawing from His example, we can learn to be steadfast, to strive for our love to be unconditional, so our children experience love that is both durable and dependable, as is the nature of God’s love for us.
In all this, I am myself, as a child of God, learning to lean on Him through my parenting trials and errors. When I talk to Him, and ask for help, He delights, just as I do when help is asked by my sons of me. He is compassionate when I lay my failure at his feet, reassuring me that to be a good parent, I don’t need to be perfect, that I couldn’t possibly be. He helps me accept that sometimes, even my best effort leaves a screw out of place, and that I can’t always fix what’s broken. Even then, He is there alongside me, reassuring me and inviting me to trust His guiding hand. He encourages me, no matter the mess I’ve made, to work lovingly, and patiently, to put the pieces back together as best I can, one precious fragment at a time.
Because with Him, things long thought spent, marked as junk, and cast aside can, amazingly, still be of utility, and bring great joy.
It is true for old Dell laptops.
It is true, I believe, for me.
And so, I am confident that it is true, also, for you.
May your parenting journeys be steeped in grace and peace.
J
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Oh, Justin, this beautiful essay just helped me so much in my relationship with God. Thank you so much.