Finding out the hard way
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
Seven-year-old Josh dropped by the office after school. He just wanted to chat. We stopped what we were doing and asked him about his day.
Out of the blue, like children often do, he said, "I'd really like to have a cat." There was a pause, "But our dog is a cat-hater. So, I can't." Another pause. "And our other dog (they raise dachshunds) is a bird-hater — we bought Tweety bird, brought it home and then found it dead. Poor Tweety, we found that out the hard way."
There was something so poignant about this little boy's confession, "We found out the hard way." It started me thinking about all the things in life I've found out the hard way. Some of them are funny and some of them are more tragic.
For instance, we found out the hard way that neutering the male cats at our house did not solve the cat problem. (I have a porch full of cats that I'd love to give to Josh if he didn't have a cat-hating dog.) It wasn't that we thought neutered males would limit our cat count — we were experimenting. Would a neutered male live through the winter outdoors or would he become coyote bait? Would a neutered male be low man on the totem pole of catdom and get run off after we'd invested all this money in him? As it turned out, our docile boys did fine; but we still had a population control problem as Tooltime Tim laughed about these crazy girls from California who don't know whom to take to the vet.
We found out the hard way that removing the roofing paper from around the porch would allow the wind to whip under the house and freeze our pipes. We found out the hard way that it costs just as much to put a new furnace in an old house as in a new house. We found out the hard way that if you don't read the oil dipstick right on the lawn mower and you let it run out of oil, you'll burn up your motor.
"Did you check the oil on that mower before you started cutting grass the other day?" Triple T wanted to know. "Do you need that lesson again?"
We found out the hard way that if that little push fertilizer applicator-dealie-bob that we bought at an auction for 50 cents doesn't spread fertilizer evenly and dumps more than it should when you turn corners, you are going to have dead spots on your lawn.
We're always learning and discovering as we go through life. Sometimes those learning experiences are delightful, serendipity, joyful as we find out someone loves us or we're offered the job of our dreams. At other times, they knock your socks off. Like when you get your first bank account and find out the hard way what havoc a bounced check can cause. Or when you misread an extension deadline with Uncle Sam and get fined for missing the date. I hate finding out things the hard way — but that's life. We find out the hard way that smoking causes cancer, fat consumption clogs our arteries, and excess stress takes a toll. We find out the hard way that drunk drivers kill even though they walk away from accidents they cause. We find out the hard way that even though we may think we're right, the majority rules.
As I listened to Josh with his seven-year-old resignation to learning things the hard way, I wanted to protect him from life's hard experiences — after all, he's a little boy. But I knew that he was destined to feel the weight of a lot of hard experiences in his life — just as we all feel them as we grow — and that the difficult lessons learned now will benefit him in the future as he faces bigger and bigger challenges.
There are only so many things in life that you can foresee, plan for, anticipate, read about in books, or discover from your mother. Meanwhile there are a million little experiences awaiting us that we still learn the hard way. Learning the hard way, on another day in the country, (whether we're seven or 70) can reward us with compassion, common sense, and eventually wisdom.
