Laziness learned from my father

My dad's mantra was, "If you're going to do something, do it right." Well, that was one of his mantras. Dad had a thousand inspiration clichés, but that was the one that stuck with me the most.

"If you're painting the wall," he'd say, "don't miss a corner and call it good enough. No sir, if you're going to do something, do it right." He said the same thing about homework, about oil changes, whatever.

Dad did an adequate job raising me into an adequate man, and if he was still here I'd say thank you, sincerely. But I don't think he really took his mantra to heart.

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I don't know why anyone would want a door, that closes and latches, between the kitchen and the living room. Our house had a door there, which was always inconvenient for carrying food from the kitchen, or groceries into the kitchen. You'd need to leave the door open while you're cooking, or put your food down and turn the knob.

When I was ten or twelve, dear old dad decided to the door had annoyed him for too many years, so he replaced it with a double-swinging door, so from either direction we could rump-bump the door open. He bought the door and supplies, probably checked out a how-to book from the library, and spent an afternoon with his drill and tools taking the old door down, hanging that new door, and hooray, we could finally carry a TV dinner into the TV room, without twisting a doorknob.

But . . . the bottom of the door brushed against the living room carpet, just a little. Whenever anyone emerged from the kitchen, you could hear a very faint 'whoosh'.

"If you're hanging a door," I often thought after that, "hang it right," but Dad hadn't. Maybe he was tuckered from all the work, or maybe it just seemed like too much bother to fix such a tiny annoyance, so he never did.

And hey, I lived there too, and never tried to fix it. All of us settle for less than a perfect world, and everyone in the family grew accustomed to that door whoosh-whooshing, as it  slowly trimmed a triangle into the carpet.

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Years later, after my father was dead and buried, Mom moved out of the big, empty house and into an apartment. She wanted to fix up the old place, to maybe sell it or rent it out. She hired people to do most of the work, but she asked me to re-hang or replace that swinging door.

It sounded like a lot of work, so I balked.

"Why don't I just take the door down?" I said. "Nobody needs a door there." Mom agreed, and taking it down only involved a few minutes with a screwdriver. We gave the door to Habitat for Humanity.

And now, the strangers who live in the house where I grew up have unobstructed passage between the kitchen and the living room. There's no doorknob, no door, and no whoosh.

This is the wisdom of my father, carried to the next generation: "If you're going to do something, do it right," he always said. I didn't want to do it right, and didn't want to do it at all, so I didn't. Thanks, Dad.

7/13/2020   
Republished: 3/12/2024   

itsdougholland.com
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