#218 Tossing The Knife

One day many years ago, my mom was chopping vegetables, and when she was done, she tossed the knife into the sink.  By some miracle of physics, the knife landed straight down like William Wallace's sword at the end of Braveheart, stabbing the metal and standing straight up.  She pulled the knife out.  The blade was ruined, chipped and bent so badly it wouldn't fit into its wooden block home sitting on top of the counter.  And the sink was ruined too.  For years, we lived with our largest pot sitting in the cabinet below, and when we noticed water seeping onto the kitchen floor we'd empty the pot into the sink and replace it in just the right spot to catch the next couple of week's worth of dripping water.  Replacing the pot was easier than fixing the sink.

I inherited this gene from my mom.  The gene that encourages you to toss a knife because those three steps to the sink are just too far to take.  It's the same gene that allows my sprinklers to be broken for more than a year, and I keep going outside to replace sprinkler heads, even though the real problem is with the water pressure.  The same gene had me go weeks without hearing things properly out of my left ear because of sinus pressure or blockage, or a combination of both.  My check-engine light is on, has been on for months, and the light fixture in my front room is wonky and will flicker on and off like an insane asylum in a crappy horror movie.  My center channel speaker buzzes when I want to watch a movie.  The G-string on my guitar cannot hold a proper tune, most likely because of some minor adjustment I am not qualified to make.

I tell this story because many people have this gene, and it affects, on some small level, many aspects of our lives.  But that's not a bad thing.  Not necessarily.  It can be frustrating, and it can lead to living life with a busted sprinkler system or a knife-sized hole in your sink.  But this gene only becomes truly harmful when it bleeds into the things we care about.  For me, that would be my writing.  My relationship with my wife.  And my pets (a puppy and two kitties).  Or my records.  My bottles of wine.  And that one tie I seem to wear to all formal occasions.

So, the moral of this useless story is this: don't toss the knife at something you care about.  Take those last three steps, otherwise you might be piercing something really important and that cannot be easily fixed.  Easy enough, right?  Duh...