Clueless
Church would start in just two minutes. He’d wanted to get there early to get something from the bishopric while they were still in their office. They’d probably already finished their bishopric meeting by now, and might be up on the stand—but just maybe, one of them might still be lingering near the office so that he could ask for the item he needed.
At home he’d yelled, “Time to go! All aboard.”
“I’ll beat you to the car!” his 10-year-old son had challenged, and raced out the door. He pretended to take the challenge, but the boy had a head start, so the outcome of the race was decided before it had begun.
“First one in the car,” the boy said exultantly as he slammed the back seat door. His father slid in behind the steering wheel, and in the spirit of the race said, “Well, I’m first one behind the wheel.”
And then they sat. If they left now they’d get to the meetinghouse with 10 minutes to spare. The bishopric would still be lingering near the office, and he could get what he needed with no hassle.
But his 16-year-old daughter wasn’t ready. So he and the boy waited there in the car. They waited five minutes before he honked. He’d started trying to get the girl out of bed one hour and five minutes ago. “You have one hour until we leave,” he’d said as he shook her awake.
Five minutes later he’d returned to her bedroom and announced, “You have 55 minutes left.” From experience he knew that it took his daughter exactly one hour to get ready for church. He also knew that getting her out of bed would require three trips to her bedroom before he’d be successful in getting her up on her feet. This morning she’d gotten out of bed with just 45 minutes left before departure time. It only took 20 minutes to get to church, but he liked to allow 30 so that they wouldn’t be late and could take care of unforeseen details.
So promptly at 8:30 he and the boy were in the car and ready to go. He appreciated the boy’s promptness. The kid even raced him. He approved. But where was his wife? She looked ready when he’d yelled, “All aboard!” Why wasn’t she coming? If she lingered, it would just encourage the girl to take longer. Ideally the three of them ought to be sitting in the car so that the girl would feel like hurrying. Probably his wife had found something that needed fixing with her hair, and the two women would be standing in front of the big mirror upstairs trying to fix their already perfect hair.
Or maybe his wife was looking for her glasses or her purse or her lesson book or the quote she needed for her class. She had a problem getting things all together and being organized. It was a skill he’d tried to teach her early in their married life, but he’d long ago given up, and now just made allowances.
He liked precision. He liked balance. He liked promptness. It was also his opinion of himself that he could do almost anything. But he couldn’t make pies. He knew that. And he couldn’t bake bread. His wife’s bread was light and fluffy and a particular delight to him. He’d tried to bake bread once or twice, but the loaves were heavy, and the bread was chewy.
He could make breakfast, though. He liked pancakes. He liked anything sweet. He liked things really sweet. His mother had only made pancakes on Saturday mornings. If his wife made breakfast she’d likely fix bacon and eggs. She wasn’t a morning person, but he was.
So he made breakfast. He handled the morning routine and let his wife sleep. He couldn’t stay in bed past 5:00, so he was up and going sometimes as early as 4:00. He’d put on his bathrobe, and go downstairs looking for a project.
At 5:30, on weekdays, he started waking his daughter. At 5:50 he started fixing pancakes. Just after 6:00 the first ones were coming off the griddle. At 6:05 he woke his son. His son had to be told just once, and would nearly beat him back to the kitchen. He liked that.
At 6:10 he went out into the driveway in his bathrobe to start the car to get it defrosted. At 6:20 he was dressed and urging his daughter to hurry so that she wouldn’t miss her ride to school. At 6:25 he had his daughter down at the corner where she transferred from his car to the neighbor’s for the ride to early-morning seminary. As he arrived back at the house his son was all dressed and just stepping out the door with buckets in hand to walk over to the barn to do his chores.
The mornings were perfectly choreographed. The previous morning he’d awakened at 4:30, put on his bathrobe and gone downstairs. He loved that bathrobe. It had been a Christmas present from his wife. It was warm and soft and had a hood. He liked things that were warm and soft. He hated cold and drafts. His ears were always cold. And so his wife made him bathrobes with hoods on them so that his ears would be warm, and so that drafts couldn’t go down his back. This was probably the fourth or fifth bathrobe that she’d made for him. He’d worn them all out with his morning routines.
His old bathrobes had been blue. The last one had been dark blue. The one before that had been a lighter shade of blue. Blue was his favorite color. This new bathrobe was red and black. It was a change, but he’d get used to it. It was made by his wife, and it was made with love. She’d made it while he was at work, and had carefully cleaned up all evidence of its evolvement and creation before he got home each day. She wanted it to be a surprise.
This bathrobe was different, too, because it was edged on the hem and sleeves with yarn stitched in a fancy pattern. It looked really nice, but the bathrobe quickly developed two problems. The first was a stray thread on the right sleeve. He pinched it between his fingers to remove it. To his surprise, it was attached to the bathrobe. He gave it a pull. It got considerably longer, but a quick jerk snapped the thread and solved the problem.
It was several days later that he noticed the first flaw in his Christmas present. The seam on the right sleeve of the bathrobe had a 4-inch separation. The only thing holding it together at the cuff was the fancy yarn stitching along the edge. It needed to be fixed, but he wouldn’t say anything to his wife about it. She’d notice it, and one morning it would be as good as new. That’s what happened with all of the holes in his clothes. He was pretty hard on his clothes—especially his work pants. His work pants had patches on top of patches. He’d counted eight patches on one pair of pants. Some of them were major patches, and had required the sacrifice of one worn-out pair to supply enough material to patch the still-useable pair.
His wife was thrifty. He liked that. She was also a seamstress. She made most of their daughter’s clothes. She was a beautiful girl, and his wife always made sure that she looked fashionable. His daughter had just won a music contest with her violin playing. Most of the other competitors had played piano. His daughter could play piano, too—with the best of them—but she’d won with her violin playing. Part of the judging had been on poise. His daughter not only looked good and played well, but also had poise. All of that was because of his wife. She was a piano teacher and worked with her kids.
Playing musical instruments wasn’t one of his abilities. He knew he could do it if he really wanted to, but right now he just didn’t have the time to learn. Maybe later.
Sewing skills were another thing he lacked. If he could, he’d fix the bathrobe himself so that he wouldn’t seem to be complaining to his wife. She never, ever whined or complained about anything, even when it took him a whole year and a half to fix the bathroom sink. He thought he was pretty good at holding his tongue, but she was an expert. He really liked that. It helped a lot toward making a perfect partnership of their marriage.
Several days after discovering the sleeve problem, he found himself stepping on a piece of yarn hanging from the hem of his bathrobe. Closer examination showed that several inches of the fancy stitching had come loose. To keep the problem from progressing, he found a big safety pin, folded the loose yarn into a wad, and pinned it to the bathrobe’s hem. His wife would notice and fix it.
Some mornings later the yarn wad worked its way loose and was hanging again. This couldn’t go on. It was an irritation. He’d promised himself that he’d work on their taxes this morning to get ready for the upcoming appointment with his accountant. He had successfully procrastinated beginning his taxes ever since he’d made the appointment three weeks ago. It was starting to worry him a lot, but how could he be expected to begin if that dangling yarn was worrying him?
He found a needle with a large eye in his wife’s sewing drawer. There was also a spool of dark thread. He sat down at the computer desk, and started a little electric heater that would blow heat into the enclosed space under the desk and keep him warm.
First he had to thread the needle. It wasn’t an easy task for his clumsy fingers, but the large eye helped. Having successfully run the thread through the eye, he cut it really long so that he wouldn’t have to thread it again. Sewing the sleeve seam should have been easy, but the thread had a way of tangling itself on the far side of the material as he pulled the needle through the near side. Frequent stops were necessary to straighten out the strands and to undo many close-call knots. It took a long time, but the end result was satisfactory.
Next he attacked the hem. He untangled the wad of yarn and removed the safety pin. Threading the yarn through the eye of the needle was difficult, indeed. He had to lay the needle down on the desk and worry the yarn through the eye just far enough so that he was finally able to grab a little hair and encourage the rest of the yarn to eventually come through.
The next problem was to figure out the stitch. The yarn made an “X” pattern all along the hem. He could even see the little regularly-spaced holes where the yarn had poked through the material. He tried several things before it dawned upon him that his wife had made the “X” pattern by going clear around the hem in one direction, and had then gone clear back around the other way with an overlapping stitch. He confidently began stitching by carefully putting the needle through the little holes that he could see in the material. By following his wife’s old stitches, the end result would make the bathrobe look just like new.
The yarn tied itself in a magnificent knot that threatened to destroy the whole project. Somehow it shook itself loose, however, and the job was completed; but the end result did not look like his wife’s stitches at all. In the first place, that part of the hem was now all puckered. In the second place, the “X’s” were all on the wrong side of the material. Oh, well, he thought, nobody apparently looks at the hem anyway.
—So here they were now in the parking lot of the church with just two minutes to spare. He bounded out of the car. The ladies were taking their time. He would like to have been gentlemanly and escort them to the door and hold it for them; but this morning they were too slow, and he was in a hurry. He walked at a fast pace across the parking lot and let himself through the double doors. He didn’t look back, but hoped the ladies weren’t too close behind so that he wouldn’t look rude and ungentlemanly. Once inside he went straight to the office door. It was locked! The bishopric had already gone into the chapel.
Down the hall was his accountant’s wife. She was looking at him. And she was laughing.
“Are you laughing at me?” he asked with surprise and just a touch of indignation. She didn’t answer but continued to chuckle. He hurried past her to the chapel to find a member of the bishopric. Behind him the woman said laughingly to his wife, “Men just don’t have a clue, do they?”
Questions:
Who can’t see self faults?
Who can’t feel what others feel, or know what’s in their minds?
Who’s guilty of unjust judgment?
Who’s clueless?
Him?
The wife?
The boy?
The girl?
The accountant’s wife?
All of the above?