Like Butter

I once interviewed for a job in high school to be a lumberjack. Well, the suburban form of a lumberjack, anyway. I was applying for a job with a tree removal company. I would be trained to climb into the tree tops and remove limbs and overhangs. I had envisioned a summer of flannel shirts, hanging out with men who were so tough they could eat glass and me becoming the most storied and daring tree climber of the crew they had no choice but to accept me as their leader and captain, young though I was. During the interview there was a series of questions I had to answer and I could tell that I was answering the way I needed to in order to obtain the job. Then he hit me with the last question "Are you absent minded at all?" I paused and then stumbled in my answer and in that little hiccup I lost the job. The man looked at me and said "Listen, last year one of my guys left the cuff unbuttoned on his flannel shirt and the sleeve got caught in the mulcher and pulled him in. He died quickly but it was a mess." He forgot to button a sleeve. Those blasted flannel shirts.

Every instance of my parents pointing out the fact I had on two different socks or shoes before heading out to school, every forgotten homework assignment or test, and every blown stop sign and narrowly missed car accident began filling my thoughts. I was one of the most absent-minded people I knew. Perhaps a job consisting of killer falling limbs and mulching machinations of death was not the right career path for me.

The man interviewing me knew it, and I both knew it. I thanked him for his time and I left. That summer I continued working at the pool as a life guard. Sitting in the sun on a chair and focusing on one thing only- that was more up my alley.

Today, however, I find myself dividing my attentions more than ever. Between being a husband and father to three boys, I have taken on more professional responsibility than I ever have in the past. Because of my personal limitation, therefore, things fall apart. I may not leave the house with two different pairs of shoes on but there are too many days where I enter a public restroom at three in the afternoon and come to realize that I never combed my hair. Which is lucky for me because there is only a margin of difference between my hair combed and my hair un-combed.

Beyond issues of neglected cosmetics I find too many tasks left undone for far too long. I cannot catch up. I am perpetually apologizing to one person or another for some thing that is still not completed. I can hear the response to these facts in the form of an answer that is not ever quite as simple as it sounds: delegation. In my life, I often find that delegation is sometimes more work than doing the job yourself because delegation often requires some form of training and teaching. While I believe in training through doing there are times where there isn’t time.

So I find Bilbo Baggins a compelling figure when he says within Tolkien’s classic trilogy “I feel thin, sort of stretched…like butter scraped over too much bread.” I have found it to be a monumental challenge to cover my slice of bread. I want to make it clear that his is not one of those “Don’t cry for me Argentina” moments; I am not trying to play the martyr. I am just trying to avoid the pride swelling defensiveness that ambushes me when some of my general incompetence is on display as things fall apart.

Here is the painful truth. Sometimes things must fall apart if they are to change as completely as they must. My limitations are perhaps an ingredient to that important process. Falling limbs and mulching accidents are the catalysts to greater safety and focus in the long run. It’s just that I hate being the lumberjack who forgot to button his flannel. Playing the part of the object lesson is an important, albeit humbling, role.