I think I may have a slight problem. My
wife thinks I’ve reached the point of being borderline crazy. I’ll give
you just one small example and let you decide.
I’ve
always been highly organized. Take my socks, for instance. I have them
sorted in order as to how warm they keep my feet, from “walking on a red
hot bed of coals” hot to “I’ve lost all feeling in my toes and my feet
are turning purple” cold. It used to drive me crazy when my wife would
get a “toasty” pair confused with a “turn up the heater” pair. But after
44 years she rarely makes a mistake and when she does I don’t always
call it to her attention, showing that I’ve made great strides with “my
little problem.”
I admit, I may seem a
bit neurotic. The first time my friend John saw my shop he was blown
away by its orderliness. All my screws are in one cabinet in old butter
containers all of the same brand, color, typeface, etc. Of course, I
have them arranged from shortest to longest. What really intrigued him
was all my bolts are in small metal coffee containers and my wife and I
don’t even drink coffee. He thinks I bought the containers and threw the
coffee away. Silly man, I’d hardly ever do that. I have all my
fasteners for my leather work in plastic prescription bottles, and on,
and on. John says that one night he’s going to sneak into my shop and
merge all my fasteners in one gigantic pile and I live in constant fear
that he may do so. I even have nightmares about it.
Okay, so maybe I should be wearing a medic alert bracelet indicating that I have an obsessive/compulsive disorder.
It’s
odd that I love the cattle business so much because it’s the most
disorganized mess I’ve ever seen. The bulls won’t stay where you put
them and the cow’s reproductive tracts aren’t indexable. And then
there’s the changing weather. And yes, I believe the climate changes. It
changed again today and, I surmise, will do so tomorrow too.
I
used to hate buying bulls because it was such a crap shoot. All you had
were three pieces of data (if you were lucky) and before a sale I’d
arrange the bulls in order of birthweight, weaning and yearling weight.
I’d pick out a couple bulls and go to the sale only to find the bull I
liked best was out of the sale due to a broken appendage (not a leg) and
the other bull was suddenly sterile. So I’d go home with two bulls I
hated. Now we have a plethora of data which makes it easy to identify
the best bulls but everyone else finds them too so they sell for ten
grand apiece and I end up going home with two inferior bulls I hate.
But I have lots of data proving their inferiority!
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