My Friend Tim

 

Tinkerer

So anyway I met my friend Tim for a bit of a chat and as usual he was trying to get the thing to work. Trying to fix it up, re-jig it; trying to restore proper functionality to it. Restore it to the way it should be. Tim is always trying to get the thing to work – it’s kind of what he does. It’s his defining interest. He’s been trying to get the thing to work for years, for as long as I’ve known him in fact. It’s an ongoing saga, I suppose you could say. Whenever we meet up he chats to me about how he still hasn’t got the thing to work. He tells me about all the ways he’s been trying to get it to work, all the approaches he’s been taking with it. He tells me about all the great ideas he’s had since I last saw him (about how to fix the thing) and about how they have so far all proved unsuccessful. Then he throws out a few new ideas that have just come to him and we discuss these for a while, looking at their various merits and demerits. The pros and cons, I suppose you could say. Then I’d say goodbye and leave him to it. I’d leave him to his endless tireless tinkering about with the thing. I’ll say one thing for Tim, he never runs out of new ideas about how to get the thing to work! He never runs out of enthusiasm and dedication either. I’ve never know him to give up hope in all the years I’ve known him. And that’s an awful lot of years, come to think of it. I must admit though that I don’t always share his faith. There are times when I think that the thing just isn’t ever going to work. I can’t help wondering if perhaps it just was never meant to work in the way that Tim thinks it should. It occurs to me at these times that perhaps Tim has entirely the wrong idea about the thing. Maybe it’s just a thing – a thing that looks as if maybe it’s supposed to do something but actually it isn’t. Not really. Not that Tim has ever been very clear about what he thinks it is supposed to do, come to think of it. Which would mean that Tim has actually been barking up the wrong tree all these years, that he’s actually been on a fool’s errand for most of his adult life. I’d never say this to him of course – that would be too cruel. I don’t know how Tim would cope with that. Not well, I’d say. Tim isn’t me, by the way. He’s just a good friend…

 

 

 

 

 

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