Starbound Lovers

My mother is a wonderful person. As the daughter of sharecroppers, she never had much and rarely spoke of those tough times. I know she'd often go to school hungry and most winters she didn't have shoes. Yet, her childhood stories were always full of laughter and fun.
She taught me so many lessons while I was growing up but the one I've kept closest to me and learned the best is probably the one she never knew she was teaching me.
 I am the youngest of six and after a while, she was able to stay at home and keep an eye on us. Because of that money was tight and often she would take it upon herself to fix things that were broken around the house. There was very little my mom couldn't do and I found myself watching her, following her around and eventually getting to help her.
 The first time I was a full on apprentice, my mom wanted to string lights in our two-car garage, she'd turned into an art studio. She'd already erected a wall, dry-walled, taped textured and painted it, plus she built rows of shelves along the side, so now she just needed to adjust the lighting. The single bulb and small window in the garage side door just wasn't enough. So on a piece of paper, she sketched out where she wanted the lights to hang then wrote out the items that she would need and the approximate lengths.
After she had her list, she and I headed out to the home improvement store. She found most of the items without help but eventually one of the salesmen found us and asked if we were lost. Lost? Really? Do most lost people stand beside a cart full of stuff waiting to be rescued by salespeople? My mom said no, but could he direct her to the thingies that hold the wiring.
 I guess he was bamboozled by her technical jargon because he asked if Mom wanted my Dad paged, apparently to rescue us.
 With grace my mom said no again and asked about the thingies.
After about a couple more offers to find my dad, the man finally took us to the thingies (junction boxes).He then lectured my mom about the dangers of everything she touched and flat out told her she shouldn't be messing with anything.
 She thanked him, got her stuff and off we went to the register to check out. I couldn't believe she let him talk to her like that. Why didn't she stand up to him, tell him she knew more than he did? She just looked at me and said, "Why? I learned something new. These things are called junction boxes and I didn't need as many because of the sizes. He saved me money."
 By dinnertime that night, my mom had wired five fluorescent lights and the garage glowed--perfect for her art studio.
From that example, I learned that there will always be people who think you're not capable, that bad experiences can teach us unexpected things and that it is faith in your own abilities that matter, not a stranger's opinion. I've never told my children these lessons, but I live by them everyday and I see that by doing so, I've passed them on to the next generation. Of course, I usually have thingies and doohickies on my list of stuff to get at the DYI store.