Our son is a very capable and independent thirty-year-old, and he purchased his own home three years ago.
From time to time he will call my husband to ask him how to fix something.
Last month he called and said that his air conditioner wouldn’t turn on. This was an near emergency, since we were on the fifth straight day of a heat wave with temperatures in the mid-nineties. So when he called us, we truly felt bad for him, especially since we were sitting in a nice air conditioned home. After my husband suggested that he try a few things, none of which helped, the only thing left to do was to call an HVAC technician. They both knew that since it was a Sunday afternoon during an extended heat wave, there would probably be a long wait plus an extra charge for a house call. But he got lucky because someone from an HVAC company was able to come within two hours of his call. Once the HVAC guy looked at both the interior and exterior units of the air conditioner, he advised my son to get an entirely new system. He explained that they were running a special new air conditioners and installations, but that they were booked until the middle of the month. Since my son balked at that, the technician then showed him how he could clean the outside unit’s fins with a garden hose. He said that he could do it, but that he’d have to charge one hundred dollars more. My son thanked him, paid the one hundred and forty dollars for the house call, and cleaned the fins himself. He was pretty proud of himself once the air conditioner started running again.