The Devil Is in the Details

“The Devil Is in the Details.”

A few years ago, I wanted to renovate the patio in my yard. Because I like working with my hands, in contrast to just talking each day, I thought I would do the job myself. Or at least part of it. My dad, well over seventy at the time, was going to help out because he knew that I was pressed for time.

Easier said than done. To provide a sturdy foundation, we were going to lay down gravel. Dad arrived a few moments before the dump truck with all the gravel. He had his own wheelbarrow with him, specially designed to maneuver gravel, and a special shovel that he always used for similar purposes. He didn’t understand why I was standing there with my regular shovel. Everyone knew that you had to use special shovels for things like this.

The truck came and dropped a hefty pile of gravel in the driveway. I imagined a few days of shoveling before me, and to be honest, it made me feel a little tired. But I was still ready to take on the challenge.

My old dad? He picked up a bit of gravel between his fingers, smelled it, felt it, and assessed its quality. After grunting somewhat, which I interpreted as approval, he began to assess the pile itself.

He measured the height of the mound with his hand; he paced how large the circumference was. I asked him what he was doing. He didn’t answer but mumbled numbers under his breath.

“One and eighty high, five meters in circumference, gradient … hmm … “After thirty seconds, he said that there were between 8.75 and 9.25 cubic meters of gravel in the driveway. I confided to him that it was actually nine cubic meters. Exactly.

Dad asked rather skeptically how I knew that. I pointed. “It’s written on the truck,” I said.

Dad was mildly impressed. I asked if he wanted to count each piece of gravel individually. He didn’t deem that to be necessary.

For hours, he walked around the site and packed and pressed, raked the gravel, smoothing everything until he thought that everything was in order. He used a level, plumb line, water, all the means at his disposal, so that nothing would go wrong.

The gravel needed to be laid at an incline of exactly one centimeter per meter. Why, you ask? “It says so in the book.” Because he was a construction engineer, he knew the book by heart. One centimeter per meter. Exactly. Who knows what terrible consequences could result if you were careless about that?

Consider the difference between one centimeter and roughly one centimeter. The former is precise; the latter is imprecise. Roughly one centimeter—it could be up two centimeters if things went bad. From a one-centimeter to a two-centimeter gradient—that’s a difference of no less than 100 percent, a huge deviation!

(The funny thing about this story is not really the event itself, but what happened when Dad read about it in the first edition of this book. He argued that that’s not how it really happened. He corrected the story on several points and claimed that the truck had held twelve cubic meters—not nine. He also insists that he’s not purely Blue, and there might just be something in that.)

He’s like that with everything. At home, if there are any technical questions about a television, a car, a microwave oven, or a cell phone, out comes the manual. He always replies, “It says here that… Why do you think they wrote this stuff if it’s not meant to be done that way?”

How do you reply to that? How do you argue with the instruction manual? It’s impossible to find arguments that a true Blue will accept. (My dad will also stop at a red light in the middle of the night, even if he is the only one within a ten-mile radius. Because that’s the way you do it.)

The great value of this approach is obvious. He will never be fooled; he will always get what he paid for. It gives him an inner peace because he knows he has checked everything out very accurately.

If you know any Blues, I am sure you will agree with me. Under normal circumstances, they’re very calm and balanced. Probably because they keep tabs on everything.