Fixing a Fabric and wood Fan: What is your integrity worth?

What is your integrity worth?

What is your integrity worth? If something goes wrong or gets broken what should be done?  We had friends over and 1.00 hand fan got broken.  The mom said to not even worry about it but that just wasn’t going to work for us.  It felt icky to leave things the way they were.  Here is what happened;

“That is really delicate, if you take that over there you are running the risk that your fan will be broken” says my friend to her daughter.  

“It will be fine Mom, I will be careful” her daughter says in return.

Her mom allows her to make the choice with the look on her face that clearly says to me, “I tried to warn you”. The object is shown around with proper enthusiasm by her friends, who are my children, and sure enough the fan gets broken.  I don’t know which of the kids broke it; maybe it wasn’t even one of my kids that broke the fan.

Here is the real question, does it really matter which kid broke the fan? No, not really and here is why I would say it doesn’t matter.  I could have tried to piece together which kid had broken the fan from their stories. However, having tired in the past to piece together what is reality and what is fiction when something gets broken when our children are using their imaginations and something goes wrong; I know I am just asking for a head ache.

In addition, if it was one of my kids it is important to me that I show my kids how to fix something when it goes wrong.  In life things get broken, sometimes it’s an accident and sometimes it isn’t an accident.  Regardless, what matters is that when a mistake is made, that we try our best to fix the object or situation if that is possible.  

While I did not want my friends daughters fan to get broken, I am still going to take advantage of the teaching opportunity.

Step#1

We gather all the broken pieces of the fan.

Step#2

We take glue and re-glue the thin wood slats to the fabric. Leaving it to dry and harden.

Step#3

                        

We cannot replace the plastic that held the fan blades together.  If we were to glue them back together they would just come apart again. So we make a tassel that can run through the holes at the bottom of the wood slats.

Step#4

We tied the tassel off and the fan is back together.

It is not the same as it was originally, however it is now mended and functions as a fan should again.  We handed the fan back to the girl at the beginning of church on Sunday and her face lights up.  At the end of church I see the girl with her fan again and it is broken again.  I blurt out, “What happened?” Her mother leans over and whispers to me “She is not very gentle with things, its ok.”

I know a person could argue that we wasted our time fixing the fan since it got broken again.  However, I would point out that the lesson was well worth the time.  I would even argue that the lesson was cheaply paid for, if it works.