Humility

In another lifetime, I was a live-in volunteer for Habitat For Humanity. All of my trades skills, which previously were non-existent and thereafter were merely scant, date from that time.

So, when my wife insisted to take the old medicine cabinet out of the bathroom, drywall over the hole, and hang a decorative mirror in its place, I was unethusiastic but tractable. It's been a loooong time since I've wielded a spackling knife in anger.

I got the drywall patch up, got a couple of coats of mud on it, when I decided I had better take it down. I had shimmed it out too far, and it was not flush. I tried again, and it was still high, but I thought I could blend it in with the 10" blade.

But my wife, who'd never seen drywall before but has a quick eye, put a stop to the job, had me pull the patch out again, and while I was away, prepped the hole herself. She's since acquire another scrap of greenboard, cut it to size, and is waiting for me to shim it out properly. In fact, she's forbidden me to do anymore work on it without her being there to check. Most mortifying to a fragile, overgrown adolescent male ego, ... But, middle age is full of such chastening moments, and the perspective afforded by a number of educational and spiritual advantages makes me less insufferable than I might otherwise be, at such times. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.

Have a quote:

Alas! it is not the child but the boy that generally survives in the man.
--Arthur Helps, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd, 1835