I am not very mechanically inclined but, every so often, I need to dismantle my washing machine in order to fix a “no spinning” problem. A few months ago, I dismantled my dishwasher because the dishes seemed to be dirtier coming out than they were when we put them in.

I am very proud to say I have been somewhat successful at fixing both appliances and getting the most out of them.

Where did I acquire the knowledge to accomplish such impressive feats of appliance repair?

Google. I typed, “washing machine will not spin” and “dishwasher not cleaning” in the search bar and in each instance, before I knew it, a video illustrating exactly what I needed to do was playing.

With a world full of knowledge at our fingertips, it is almost difficult to imagine what people did before the Internet when they had a life problem to solve.

I know what my mom did. She actually talked to a live person – Pat Olstad.

Still fresh in my mind, one case in point occurred nearly 40 years ago when I was in grade school at Sacred Heart Elementary in Staples, MN.

Sitting in class one morning I began to feel the need to scratch the area of my body upon which I was sitting. This need became so overwhelming I asked to be excused to the bathroom to remedy the problem. Having the privacy required, I proceeded to scratch in manner I figured would sufficiently do the job. Unfortunately, any relief was only temporary.

Possessing a touch of Catholic guilt, I wondered what venial misdoings I had committed to warrant such an affliction and was anticipating my next confession to cleanse my soul. As each successive scratching session became more intense, followed by an even more intensive need to scratch, I replayed each day since my last confession to determine what I may have done to deserve this wrath. As the plague progressed, a genuine and heartfelt Act of Contrition followed each trip to the bathroom.

Well, the torment relentlessly continued throughout the day and even past the final bell. The moment I got home, I dramatically shared my story with my mom only to learn each of my seven siblings reported similar experiences.

A call to Pat Olstad solved the mystery. Pat asked my mom the right questions and soon the problem became clear. It seems the last time my mom had washed the whites, she included the living room curtains, which happened to be made out of FIBERGLASS!

So what does this story have to do with anything important?

Other than hopefully providing you a little bit of humor and a little bit of advice (scratching when you have fiberglass in your skin only makes things worse – much worse!), it reminds me that though using technology can often be a more efficient way of getting the information we need, it can’t solve all of our problems.

Often times the best thing to do is just call up the Pat Olstads in our lives and have a real conversation.