Don't Overlook the Obvious

I once read a news item about the struggle a moving company had physically moving a big two-story house across a city to a new location. They got it up on big cushy wheels okay and through the streets and down to a bridge. But then they ran into a problem: the house wouldn't clear the height of the bridge by four or so inches. The workers struggled for some time wondering whether to weaken the bridge structure by trying to remove trusses temporarily or weaken the house by trying to lower its roof crown, and things were at a standstill till one of the workers heard a boy, watching nearby from his bicycle, say, "why don't you just let some air out of the tires?" They did, and the house slid through nicely. In their zeal to attend to details, they had overlooked the obvious.

I tend to do the same thing. A born worrier, I try to imagine whatever surprises Murphy has in store for most projects I undertake and prepare to deal with them. When we got our new refrigerator I went over and over checking with both yardsticks and tape measures the height to clear the overhead shelves, the width and depth, and cleared thoroughly the path through the garage into the house, making sure the car was parked tight against the wall to make a wide run for the refrigerator applaince dolly. We got our automated call Wednesday night that they'd deliver it Thursday morning between nine and eleven. I knew I'd be working at school; Barb would have to handle whatever came up. But I had confidence we'd done all we needed to prepare. I'd brought in cooler chests and storage bins sufficient to receive the food. I worked the icemaker faucet back and forth a few times to be sure it wouldn't stick, and taped the excess line coiled against the back of the old unit so they wouldn't run over it. I'd protected some security cam wires where they'd be run over, possibly, by creating a valley for them between two lengths of yardstick and taped everything down good. I was sure I'd thought of everything.

But when I turned on my internet quad picture of my house cams between classes, I was appalled to see one cam, the one on my front door, askew viewing the blank door jam, instead of the cul-de-sac and house across the street. I knew immediately what had happened: the delivery men had brought the fridge through the double front doors instead of through the garage. Aargh! That meant they'd probably sever my through-the-door wiring and mess up my new door cam against the house, and I'd have to repair or replace about a hundred dollars worth of equipment. I called Barb. Yes, they came in and out of the front double doors.

Well of course they would, I realized. It was obvious--the easiest way to deliver the item and remove the old unit. But in my obsession with details, I had overlooked the obvious.

Probably the worst non compis mentis I ever committed was when I once made breakfast in my Chicago near north side apartment one morning. I was trying to make up some orange juice from concentrate, and in my still-half-asleep fog I couldn't get the frozen concentrate to shake out of the large-size cardboard cylinder even after I pried off its metal lid. So I ran some warm water around it and shook it again. The vacuum was too great on the bottom; it wouldn't come out. So I had a can punch in my hand and--you guessed it. Holding the cannister upside-down over the floor, I punched a nice triangular hole in the bottom. That worked. With the vacuum broken, the entire cylinder of frozen Del Monte Premium 100% Orange Juice concentrate fell to the floor with a squishy thud. I had overlooked the obvious.

But wait, there's more! After gathering up what I could of the orange juice glob and spooning it into the pitcher, I went for the necessary can of waterto the kitchen sink and--you guessed it--filled my big cannister to the brim with cold water, crossed the kitchen to the pitcher on the table, and poured in the few drops left in the cannister which had not streamed out the triangular hole I'd made in the bottom all across the kitchen floor. Twice in two minutes I had again overlooked the obvious.

With a Ph.D. and sixty-seven years of life experience, I would like to believe I'm not just plain stupid, but sometimes it's hard to be convinced. If I've learned to respect one thing, it's that all the expertise in the world, or the intellectual accuity, or the experience, or the wisdom, or attention to details, is no substitute for the best of all smarts: what they used to call "common sense." I think maybe it's the sense nature programmed in us that enables the human race to survive, despite all the warped, airy thinking we too often, in our folly, embrace instead.