A few years ago my son, Adam, was back home for a visit. I can't remember now what auto repair he needed to do, but he was working in my garage, replacing a part under the hood. The repair seemed to take a long time, but finally he came back in with a triumphant look.
He described the issue to us, and the problem he encountered turned out to be an unexpected left-hand thread on the part. He tried over and over to get it assembled until, he told us, he remembered "Dad's Peanut Butter Trick."
My mind raced to remember any kind of mechanical trick I had learned and taught that used peanut butter. It didn't seem to be a lubricant I'd ever want to use, and he probably wasn't talking about baiting a mouse trap with it. I came up empty when I tried to figure out what my trick had been.
After the pregnant pause, he continued and reminded me how I taught him as a little boy how to thread the lid back on the peanut butter jar by turning it backward first until it went "thump" and fell down at the beginning of the thread. That was what he meant by the "trick". He apparently heard the tiny "thump" while turning and turning the bolt to the right, and when he finally realized what it meant, he turned the other way and determined it was a left-hand thread.
The simplest little skills sometimes mean a lot in the right situation.
