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It seems to me that we ought to be able to fix the bucket. Our blue bucket - the one on which the kids wrote "Pudding Hill Mining Visitor" in black Sharpie - has been missing a handle for quite some time now. While it holds water (and manifestly, rocks) just fine, it's hard to lug information technology around without a handle. So, I've been eyeing upwards new buckets every time I go to the supermarket. And yet, I can't bring myself to purchase ane, because I really think nosotros should be able to fix the ane nosotros have.

See, my married man is a handy guy. He's made CD cabinets, tables and even a bed frame. He'due south spent only about every night this calendar week "helping" the Cub Scouts build a bench, and therein lies the trouble: He doesn't have time to figure out how to craft a metal handle for our saucepan. And there comes a point where the fourth dimension and effort that would be spent to fix something is worth more than but buying a inexpensive plastic replacement fabricated in Red china while you're out picking upward milk.

I suppose I could wrap a wire hanger around the darn thing, simply I am not handy at all. No doubt the bucket would wind upwardly more useless than it is without a handle. And frankly, information technology'south only easier to kicking the thing effectually the kitchen floor when I mop.

Only then I retrieve back to my grandparents, who lived through the Low, and I first to wonder if mayhap it's finally time that my generation began to forgo the convenient replacements, the plastic goodies and the gadgets that fill our stores, and set what we have.

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My father-in-police force, a Hungarian immigrant who escaped from Budapest with nothing just the clothes he was wearing while Russians shot at him, could set up the saucepan. After all, the human made a become-cart for his kids out of an 8-horsepower cement mixer engine and some metallic.

No doubt he'd not just fix the bucket's handle, but he'd also figure out how to make it automatically empty itself using some medical tubing and an old Coke bottle. Sure, he's retired and has more free time than nosotros do, but I'll bet he could have plant the time fifty-fifty dorsum when he worked overtime as a machinist.

Simply so, those were simpler times, dorsum when people didn't answer work-related e-mails after dinner, when "travel" sports meant y'all simply had to get across town to picket the game, when the only affair that tweeted at you lot all twenty-four hours long had wings and a beak. When y'all could get to the supermarket without encountering people on the TV that hangs in the fish department reminding you to castor your teeth iii times a day, replace your heart-unfriendly meals with tofu and encourage your family to salvage the earth.

No wonder I just want to buy the stinkin' bucket.

I tin can't determine if my angst over buying a new bucket is a sign that times accept changed. Peradventure it means that Americans are ready to overhaul their over-consuming ways and go dorsum to a simpler time when we stock-still things instead of buying new and so very ofttimes. Or peradventure, I just want a bucket with a handle.