Problem Solver ~ That’s Me :-)

For most of my career with SUPERVALU I was a problem solver. Oh, “problem solver” was never part of my job title, but it certainly was part of my job in Retail Technology and during my supervisory years as a meat specialist.

Problem solving has been so much a part of my adult life (perhaps all of my life) that I find myself solving problems almost subconsciously. Before one thinks I’m boasting, I should point out that all solutions to the problems I encounter aren’t necessarily the best solutions, and sometimes I’m not satisfied with the solution that I come up with.

Still, that doesn’t discourage me from trying to solve whatever problem I face. With respect to a given task, I’m always interested in finding a better way to complete it. Even when writing, I often rephrase a thought to better suit me. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at communicating my thoughts over the past fifteen years that I’ve penned and shared my thoughts and deeds with others, but I’m probably not the best judge.

Since volunteering practically full time with Habitat for Humanity, I’ve been challenged to keep up with the tools I use on the job site. I’ve been known to lay down my hammer, only to discover it’s not where I put it when I went to pick it up again. I have a tool belt that helps with this sort of problem, but it only helps when I wear the tool belt, which is not all the time I use a hammer.

For the past two months, I’ve worked mostly toward creating office space and a board room in an old warehouse. Along with that goes plumbing and electrical work, so it’s a lot like remodeling an old house. With other volunteers working alongside me, it makes tool and equipment organization more difficult because we’re basically using “company” equipment and each person has a much right-of-use as the next person.

In the past week, two utility knives that I “carry” at work have gone missing; I don’t have a clue where my speed square is, or, for that matter, the location of my personal screwdriver.

A month ago, I had two carpenter pencils in my tool belt; today there’s not even one. I did find a used carpenter pencil the other day that had once been sharpened at both ends. It must be getting old, because the lead was pulling loose from the wood that secures it. I discovered this while trying to sharpen it. The utility knife I was using to shave off the wood would grab the lead and pull it out the end of the pencil.

I found a solution that I believe illustrates my problem-solving abilities. No, I didn’t find a way to stop the lead from getting inadvertently pulled out of the pencil while sharpening it. But, I did find a way to continue using the pencil for several more days without sharpening the lead. No, no, I didn’t find a hardener to keep the soft lead from dulling when scribing lumber for cutting or marking starting and ending points for a chalk-line on wallboard or sheetrock.

Are you ready for the solution? I fashioned it into a mechanical pencil, one where the barrel is fixed but the lead moves back and forth inside the barrel.

I know, I know, you want to know how I did that. Okay. I put a sheetrock screw in the other end of the pencil. The diameter of the screw is slightly larger than the hole in the pencil filled by the lead. The screw is about an inch and one-fourth long, so I can “hand” screw it deeper into the hole to push more lead out the other end. Eventually, I’ll have to cut more wood from one end of the pencil to continue using it for whatever purpose a carpenter pencil is needed.

Barbara, my wife and Executive Director of Pontotoc County Habitat for Humanity, has since supplied us with a new box of carpenter pencils, but I’m kind of fond of the one I’m using, and nobody else has asked to borrow it.

Before ~

After ~

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Choir

Dressing for our recent Christmas Music program, presented by the Adult Choir of FBC, Pontotoc, I picked a white shirt from those in my closet and the bright red tie our choir director gave me to wear with my white shirt and black pants. Once I completed tying the fore-in-hand knot and was satisfied with the length (a man’s tie should hang no lower and no higher than the top of his belt buckle), I noticed the tips of the collar seemed to be missing the stiffness I expect from my shirts.

I didn’t want to be late for the six o’clock mandate to be IN the choir room and seated, and I was somewhat fearful I’d be tardy if I could not quickly locate a pair of collar staves. Finding them, I rushed into the living room where Barbara was seated and asked her to insert the staves into the sleeves underneath the collar. I did so because my hand to eye coordination while looking in a mirror is not my best attribute.

Barbara had trouble seeing where to slip the stave into the underside of the collar and told me she needed better light. I began to back away from her with her still hanging onto my collar and had almost reached the light switch when she said she could then see better.

“It went through!” she exclaimed.

“What are you talking about?”

“It came out the button hole,” she stated.

‘What button hole?”

“The one at the end of your collar.”

“Oh, good grief! I put on a button-down collar. Just fasten my collar to the buttons,” I sighed.

If this is the start of our growing old together, the two of us may be in for a bumpy ride.

Do We Remember Pearl Harbor

There’s a lot of hype today, December 7, 2011, about never forgetting the dastardly deed we remember as Pearl Harbor. Truly, in the lifetime of most of us, it’s an event eclipsed only by the terrorists’ act of 9/11/2001.

In subtle ways we’ve long forgotten Pearl Harbor. Yes, a movie about it still shows up on TV every so often, and the media reminds us of the anniversary, but in our day-to-day lives, we don’t remember.

We continue to buy Japanese automobiles in numbers so great that most American automobile manufactures now struggle to stay in the black, financially. Before China started making everything for us, we bought a lot of TVs, radios, and gadgets made in Japan. Even then, did we stop and think that our purchase was enabling the nation that crippled our naval fleet and left so many Americans dead or wounded back in ’41? I doubt many thought about it.

But, Pearl Harbor was only the beginning of the atrocities by the Japanese. They normally chose to fight to the death rather than surrender, thus, many American lives were lost as our military sought to capture Pacific island after Pacific island. Captured soldiers were treated horribly by the Japanese, but who cares to remember that in our “global economy?” Instead, we continue to question our ethics in the use of the atom bomb to bring Japan to the peace table.

We live for the moment, and as a people, we could not care less about Pearl Harbor. Ask anybody under the age of twenty-five what happened on December 7, 1941, and there will not be many who know. The reason is simple, we’ve forgotten, too, and it happened so long ago that it’s no longer relevant to our younger generation.

Surely, many of us have not forgotten and many of us will never forget, but our numbers are shrinking.