I once asked my father a question that stymied him.

“How come you patiently taught my brother how to do fit-it projects but you never tried to teach me?” I asked the father I used to think knew everything.

Dad was smart as a whip, as they say, and could fix anything. Cars, washing machines, old refrigerators - nothing was beyond him.

“Either you learn how to do everything yourself or you have to pay someone to do it,” he said. Since he never had much money he had to do it himself.

I remember when he worked tiring shifts in the mines then came home to work more hours building a bathroom in our house.

When he was urging my brother to work along side of him Richard didn’t have much interest at first. But Dad kept telling him he would be happy some day if had fix-it skills and didn’t have to pay someone to do it.

So I asked again why my dad didn’t at least try to teach me some basic skills.

His answer: “Because you’re a girl. You won’t need to do it. When you get married your husband will do all this.”

Dad was right about my husband doing it all. Although Andy was always an academic, he was amazing when it came to doing home improvement projects. There was nothing he wouldn’t tackle on his own.

When we bought our old 100-year-old house we were able to afford it because the house needed so much work. The bathroom fixtures were so old they could have been in a museum.

With no past remodeling experience Andy was able to install a new bathroom and state of the art kitchen.

But the thing that wowed our friends was that Andy single-handedly installed a new electrical system complete with a zoned system that cut down on the cost of electricity.

When people asked him how he learned how to do that, he told the truth. He read it in a book. He believed there was nothing he needed to do that he couldn’t learn from a book.

So, how much do you think he taught me?

The answer is absolutely nothing. He believed my job was to take care of the kids. His job was to do everything else.

When I begged to help with painting the rooms, Andy “allowed” me to paint the inside of the closets. I guess that says it all about why I have no basic fix-it skills.

I remember feeling sorry for him that he was stuck in the house doing one remodeling job after another while I had fun at the community swimming pool with my daughters.

I thought my husband was getting cheated while I had all the fun with our daughters.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that we were both being cheated. He was cheated out of precious time with our daughters and I was cheated out of knowing basic skills I would need in life.

We realized our mistake when Andy had a serious stroke that left him completely paralyzed on his right side.

Never one to give up, he told me if I could be his right hand he could still do basic repairs.

When the garbage disposal broke Andy put a wrench on it and told me to turn it. I somehow stripped the gear and we had to buy a new disposal.

We learned I wasn’t a very handy right hand helper. How much better it would have been if the men in my life had tried to teach me some basic skills.

Instead I end up feeling stupid when I can’t do something that should be easy.

It happened again this week when I got a slow leak in a tire. Instead of being able to handle it myself, I had to drive to my garage and wait for my mechanic to check the pressure in all the tires.

There was a guy in the waiting room who wasn’t bashful about letting me know I should have been able to do that myself.

“My wife can do it,” he said “and so can my daughter. She 12.”

OK I’m going to buy a new tire gauge and learn how to use it properly.

“It’s not rocket science,” said the guy in the waiting room.

It was a week when I was down on myself for “being stupid.”

My friend Linda assures me I’m not stupid. I’m just inexperienced. She said she didn’t start doing things around the house until her husband went blind and couldn’t do it.

People like my dad who thought “girls didn’t need to know that stuff” were very short sighted assuming we would always have a guy to do it.

If I can impart any message here it’s that women should learn to do as much as they can on their own. They won’t always have a guy around to do it.

I have female friends my age with considerable skills. One woman repaired her drywall and installed vinyl flooring.

“When you don’t have anyone to do it for you and you don’t have the money you can learn to do anything,” she said.

See that. Never let anyone tell you that you don’t need to learn any skills. You’ll never be sorry if you learn as much as you can.

Contact Pattie Mihalik at newsgirl@comcast.net.