Online help

Back in May, when I met up with a Twitter friend in the National Gallery in Dublin, she kept her two kids amused by letting them watch YouTube videos. I commented, “How did we ever live before YouTube.”

Her reply: “We packed bags of coloring books and crayons.”

But we got onto the topic of YouTube as a source of tutorials, and I remarked that one of my colleagues does all kinds of car repairs by looking up symptoms and watching videos on how to fix them. Even I was reassured when I first started making pizza dough when I checked and, yes, dough crawling up the dough hook is totally within normal parameters.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, the arm to the handle of one of my toilets broke, and I finally got round to trawling Google for how to replace it. Sure enough, there were plenty of videos. Looked pretty easy. So, I dropped by the Home Depot and perused the plumbing aisle. One of their staff members asked if I needed help, and I said I needed to replace a toilet handle assembly. He asked where the handle was located; the side. Then, what brand toilet it was.

Well, naturally I had no clue. But he pointed to a Koehler product and said that one works for most. I picked it up and he asked one more question.

“Do you know which way it turns?”

I totally was ready. “It’s reverse-threaded.”

His face lit up and he patted me on the arm. “Very good!”

“YouTube!”

So I went home and followed the video instructions, et voilà:

Turns out it is a Koehler, so totally hardware compatible.