A Job Done Right

I will never forget that day – the hot, viscous anger boiling inside my chest, the charging of an energy within me nearing mania, or the disdain I held so closely for the man known as “Dad.”

On that day, “Dad,” in all of his “wisdom” and unbreakable resolve, decided that he would yet grind into my values the meaning of doing a job right. It was not enough that by mowing and trimming the large yard that wrapped around our modest home, I was already doing more than almost every other boy my age. The handlebar of our mower was level with my narrow eleven-year-old shoulders and this, combined with the steep hillsides of our property, made cutting the grass a toiling exertion. Yes, “Dad” had used his hard-earned money to buy a mower with powered propulsion, and I had been told I was lucky to have this function as it was something he had done without. However, our hillsides were steep enough as to render this function useless, the plastic wheels spinning in the wet grass as my every effort, not the power propulsion, inched the mower up the slopes. No, this was not enough.

You see, “Dad” was a former military man, and his father before him, and so on. “If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing right the first time,” was only one of his mantras of discipline; he had many. Concerning the mowing of the lawn, his philosophy was that the grass should look like a military haircut – not a blade of grass should be taller than the rest, and the edges better be sharper than the KBAR blade attached to his belt. If this wasn’t achieved on attempt number one, the whole job had to be done again, and spot mowing and touch-up trimming weren’t allowed because if you didn’t have the attention and discipline to do the job right the first time, then surely you missed more than what “Dad” could readily see from his view and re-running over the entirety of the lawn was completely necessary. Before it became my duty to mow the lawn, “Dad” committed me to several hot Saturday hours of following and watching him as he showed me, row after row, edging stroke after stroke, how the job was supposed to be done and what the finished product should look like. After that, it was my responsibility to copy his perfection.

On the first day of my mowing duties, I awoke early, per “Dad’s” requirement, to start before the sun made the day too hot, though I didn’t mind the early rise as I had made plans with friends for later that day and I knew that starting early would give me the time I needed to finish. After three hours of labor, meticulously mowing straight lines and wearing down what must have been yards of trimmer line, I proudly presented my work to “Dad.” With one look out the window from our air-conditioned home, he eyed a small patch of grass silhouetting against the fence line that stood taller than the turf around it and said, “Do it again.”

Frustrated, but resolved to finish the job before the time came to meet my friends, I started my second time over the lawn in the late morning. I felt silly as I mowed lines over grass that had already been cut, and tried to keep the stinging sweat from the blisters that were developing on my thumbs. This second time, the job had gone faster, because even though I had to touch every inch of lawn and edge all over again, I watched carefully for missed spots and made sure to focus time on them. With the day now well into the afternoon and my meeting time with my friends fast approaching, I walked the lawn one final time looking for the smallest imperfection, and being satisfied with my work, presented the lawn a second time to “Dad.” This time, he had to step outside to get a closer look, because it looked too good from far away; as he walked, he had me follow him while he surveyed every verge. I prayed over and over in my head that he might find no imperfection, no cause for me to do the job again. And then, as he bent over and flicked his fingers over a corner spot where no trimmer or mower could have reached, my heart sank into my gut, and I stood in silence as he said those words again, resolutely and matter-of-factly, “Do it again.”

Even though I had only missed a tiny spot and could simply pull the few blades left tall to complete a perfect lawn job, I knew an argument was pointless. There was no changing the mind of “Dad.” With fury oozing from my pores, rage dripping from my fingertips, and an atomic reaction within me nearing detonation, I wrestled to hold back my burning eleven-year-old frenzy and asked if I could call my friends to let them know I wouldn’t be coming. After a unhappy phone call, I returned once again to my mower, this time my hands wrapped in Band-Aids and gloved as my blisters were now broken and open.

As I started my third time through, I found it hard to focus on my labor; my brain was only capable of focusing on the creation of new ways to insult “Dad.” I muttered curses under my breath as I re-re-walked every yard of grass wondering if I’d begun to wear ruts into the lawn.

Eventually, as evening came and the heat of the day and my temper cooled, my motivation turned toward making absolutely sure there was no possible way “Dad” would find any reason to make me complete a fourth time through. When it came time to trim, I decided the electric trimmer wasn’t enough, and broke out the scissor-style trimmers so that as I crawled on my hands and knees, scouring for heads of grass poking even centimeters above their neighbors, I could snip with precision and know for a surety that I’d left nothing behind. After checking and rechecking my work as the sun sank on the horizon, I meekly approached “Dad,” requesting, for a third time, his approval of my work. With the darkness of night increasingly obscuring an accurate review, “Dad” spotlighted the lawn with his mag-lite flashlight, examining my work with the same diligence he expected of me. As we neared the end of his inspection, I realized that I no longer cared what would happen once he finished, because one way or another, my day had been spent, wasted on a goal of perfection that had no use. Finally, after what felt like forever, to my surprise, he finally stopped and said, “Good job. That’s how a lawn should look,” and then walked away.

Exhausted, I returned the lawn equipment to the garage, ate a quick dinner, showered, and crashed into bed. As I tried to drift away into sleep, I found that my mind was fixated on “Dad” and his excessively strict, even cruel nature that placed perfectionist expectations on a young boy. “No normal person operated the way he wanted me to operate,” I told myself, and even though he had successfully gotten me, an eleven-year-old boy, to do a man’s worth of work and to do it well, he was wrong for doing what he did. In that moment, I knew better than I every had that the rest of my childhood and young adulthood would be spent biding my time until I could escape his overwatch, but that once I got out, I’d finally be able to be just like everyone else. I’d finally be able to have a normal life.

However, I was wrong. Somehow, what “Dad” did to me on that day and throughout my remaining time at home has somehow managed to cling to me. Now, after many years have passed since my military mowing days, I work as a physician, my chosen specialty being pediatrics, and his extremism has found a way to carry over into the way I care for my patients.

As a pediatrician, I focus my time and effort in preventing childhood illness and seeking to remedy disease that has already begun; there is a lot to know and ask when evaluating a child patient, and “Dad’s” archaic standards still haunt my habits as I give special attention to the details of a newborn baby’s birth history or an adolescent girl’s pattern of weight loss and failing grades. His painstaking effort to beat his addiction for fastidiousness into me was somehow successful, and I now find myself checking and rechecking the effectiveness of the treatments I’ve prescribed to my many small patients. His strict rules have cultured wariness for shortcuts within me, as well as a never-questioning acceptance of the importance of a thorough disease workup and evaluation for every patient I see. Sure, I’m more mindful than most and I’m a better pediatrician for it, but I only ever wanted to be normal, and my childhood efforts to fulfill “Dad’s” stern expectations still find a way to rob my life of that regularity. I guess he was successful in grinding his values into my understanding of the world after all, and I’ll never be the same because of it.

Thanks a lot, “Dad.”