Discovering What Doesn’t Work
My brother is four years older than I am. It has been that way all my life no matter what I do. He was one of my teachers when I was growing up. He taught me that older people were smarter than younger people, except of course in the case of our parents. He laughed the hardest when he was able to prove he was smarter that I was.
During one particular hard economic time, my dad raised chickens in a place he rented several miles from our home. It was a project for the whole family as it took a lot of work to keep the chickens fed, watered, clean, warm in the winter and cool in the summer. I remember dreading our Saturday mornings when we would all pile in the car to spend several prime non-school hours taking care of the chickens. I was eight at the time. Therefore my brother was a preadolescent at twelve. Perhaps this explained his pesky behavior.
While I had some resentment about having to do this work, I did take pride in helping. This nurtured my feelings of self-worth doing work that ultimately helped my family. The thing that bothered me the most was that we had no cold water to drink on those hot, muggy Alabama mornings. We had a green hose curled up on the outside of the chicken house, usually lying in the sun. Even if you let the water run, it still tasted like plastic or maybe even rubber—they both taste the same to me anyway.
One Saturday, I decided to make myself some ice water to take with me instead of drinking out of that darn hose. If thermoses had been invented by then, we did not own one. I filled up the jar with as may ice cubes as I could and filled it to almost overflowing so there was no room at the top. Then I screwed the lid on as tight as I could.
I admit to gloating. I thought it was a great idea and to my eight year old brain, foolproof.
“I’m going to have delicious cold water to drink. Na, na, na, na, na, na!” I chanted with glee in the back seat. No seat belts then, so there was ample room to wiggle with delight.
“Yeah, how you gonna do that?” My brother took the bait and finally I was going to prove I was smart too. My parents were listening intently.
I explained that I had filled up the jar to the very top with water and ice cubes and made sure there was no air in it. “… so there is no room for the ice to melt.” I declared with the pride of having discovered the first atom.
With no seat belt to restrain him, my brother threw himself from an upright intent position onto the back of the seat and rolled from side to side with gales of laughter.
“That is the stupidest idea you have ever had. No room to melt. And what about the room the ice cubes themselves take up and there’s even air bubbles in the ice cubes so that’s even more room.”
My mother joined my brother in the laughter and I realized the flaw in my foolproof plan and I understood the Biblical admonition of “Pride goeth before a fall.” I had been very proud of my idea and when it was so readily proven to not work, especially by my nemesis, my self-esteem melted quicker than the ice cubes.
My dad did not join in the laughter. When it had died down enough for anyone to listen to him he said, “Now wait a minute, Lenora. That idea was a good one. The fact that it won’t work is beside the point. What you did was saw a problem and you used all the information you had to solve it. That alone shows that you were using that creative brain of yours. Good job.”
Good ole Dad! He rescued me from stupidity. My brother and mother stopped laughing and the sparkle in my eyes came back. I walked a little taller that day and the water in my Mason jar was warm but it did not taste like the garden hose, so at least there was some improvement. My dad being an inventor taught me a lot.
Thomas Edison was accused of being a failure when a reporter reminded him that he had failed in 10,000 experiments to make the light bulb. Mr. Edison’s reply was, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
I would not say that I invent things that have the potential of moving humankind out of whatever darkness it happens to be in, but in my home there are legacies of my father’s expressed faith in my ideas. I have a garage door type of contraption that leads to my attic and I am currently working on perfecting a chicken coop in my basement. I have very happy and productive chickens and their eggs do not freeze in the winter like they did when they lived in an outdoor shed.
There are many of my ideas that end up on the scrap heap or even the compost pile. My chickens love to scratch around my “failures” when I am inventing new recipes. As for my brother, he is a very active participant of the Tea Party and I continue to be a bleeding heart liberal. I have created a geographical distance between my brother and myself; he lives in Florida and I live in Maine. My father taught me that if you can’t beat them, find an ally and get on with your life. Over the years I have found that my brother and I do not agree on just about everything. I look at this not as our failure at a sibling relationship, we are simply discovering ways our relationship does not work.
Lenora Trussell
Copyright May 2011
Lenora Trussell, RN, author of Circling the Drain, a collection of end-of-life stories and Pain Smarts, a creative strategy for symptom management, is available for workshops, presentations, and consultations on this and other topics. Her web address is www.lenoratrussell.com.