It was one of my secret desires to solder one electric wire to another some time. When I was small, my mother would discourage all such activity on my part, saying such things were not for the likes of us to do. Unfortunately I selected a profession in which there was no call to do such work. Once I needed it done on one of my gadgets, when the engineer told me it was not suitable. Perhaps I would have done it myself successfully if I knew how. Another time I needed it done, the engineer did it himself and I could not ask him to let me try. It did not seem awfully difficult, provided you did not touch the hot tip. When my son wanted to do it as a child to put a 3D accelerator card on to the motherboard of his computer which did not have a slot for it, I discouraged him from buying a soldering iron because I was afraid he would burn a hole in his had by touching the hot tip. I upgraded his hardware instead. Last week my battery charger stopped working, and its soldered terminals came off when I was repairing it. Then I thought I should put a DC adapter in my lamp which worked with three AAA cells. Now that there was no one to discourage me, I decided to do both of these jobs myself. I purchased a soldering iron, and wire. The shopkeeper gave me working instructions. When I told my son about it during our video conference, he adviced me, “be careful with its tip.”
“I know” I said. “The tip is hot and it will burn my hand if I touch it.”
“It will make a hole in your hand if you touch it!” he said drily. Either he still resented my not allowing him to solder a game card on his motherboard when he was a child, or he did not like the idea of his father, a gynecologist, doing something that an electrician or engineer should be doing. Since I had already invested in the equipment and its consumables, I did the soldering anyway. The insulation of the wire came off when the tip was hot enough, the solder wire broke off the main bundle when touched with the hot tip, and fixed the desires in desired places. It worked, though perhaps not like a charm. I used up 100% more of the solder wire than an experienced guy would have done. That was somewhat damaging to my ego. But the happiness at having done it successfully was worth it. Now I won’t have to get frustrated next time when the engineer does not find time to do it for us, or says the job is not suitable for soldering.
