Heavy Metal Madness: Confronting Setbacks Honestly and with Grace

Gene Gable

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I’ve always been immune to minor physical pain. Not because I’m brave — I think it’s just a case of poor circulation or some rare nerve disorder. For the first few years my wife Patty and I were together she would often exclaim in horror as I undressed, reacting to some large bruise, cut, swelling, laceration, abrasion, contusion, or other wound with an “oh my God, what happened?”

Of course I didn’t have a clue what happened — just the normal wear and tear of a clumsy person who bumps, falls, bashes, and slams into things on a regular basis. And while I can still wrangle some sympathy and a Band-Aid if I try hard enough, Patty is prone these days to simply ask, “Did you know you are bleeding profusely?” and leave it at that. She gave up long ago trying to convince me I needed stitches, a cast, an icepack, or a tetanus shot. At one point, she accused me of enjoying the pain but that’s a topic best left between my analyst and me.

No, it’s not physical pain that bothers me, it’s the pain of admitting I screwed up, over-committed, underestimated, or otherwise made a mistake in judgment. I hate being wrong, and I’m definitely one of those stubborn men who feels I could do just about anything if only given the opportunity. Land a small plane after the pilot collapses? Easy. Handle myself with composure on Crossfire? Wouldn’t even break a sweat. Start an article or do a page layout within hours of the deadline? In my sleep!

The problem with this style of confidence is that it’s only valuable when everything goes just right, the Gods are with you, the moon is in the right phase, and it happens to be your lucky day. Sometimes, you encounter a setback. Then it’s all a question of how you handle it, who you can find to blame, and whether you fess up or try to cover up.

Setbacks Come in Many Flavors
As I find myself deeper and deeper into uncharted territory in my heavy-metal print shop, I’ve begun to see the pattern of mistakes more clearly than ever, as I’ve made more than my usual quota. And it’s pretty hard to blame my setbacks on my co-workers, since they are all felines, so I’ve had to be more honest than usual about my own culpability, and that hurts.

I’ve broken setbacks into three distinct categories, and in the past few months I’ve managed to hit them all. I’m sure everyone can relate to these, especially if, like me, you can’t say “no,” even to yourself. I think that tendency comes from the time when I had my own small business and never wanted to turn away a customer. I’m sure in today’s under-staffed economy a lot of folks find themselves in the same boat — pushing their skills to the edge over and over again.

1. Acts of God. This is my favorite category of setback because you are held blameless, and may even get some sympathy along the way. What boss or customer doesn’t accept being struck by lightening as a reasonable excuse for not getting the job done? And if you are lucky enough to have a three-day city-wide power outage or flash flood in the middle of that big project, there’s a camaraderie of “we’re all in this together” that builds community while it buys you extra time.

Into this category I’m putting two recent shop setbacks. The first involves my co-worker Sable, who has an ongoing problem with her extra-furry coat. After all, it was God who made her into a longhair cat and didn’t give her the brains to preen sufficiently. Sable fell in love with her heated bed more than the other two cats and developed a very unnatural attraction to it — she only gets up to eat, as far as I can tell, and all that laying about caused her to develop massive clumps of matted hair, which no amount of brushing could untangle.

A few years back I sent Sable to the animal hospital with a large chunk of skin missing from an aborted effort to cut her mats out with a scissors, so she no longer lets me near her with sharp instruments. The only solution was to pack her off to the cat groomer, and admit I needed professional help getting the workforce back in tip-top shape. That’s one of the hardest parts of screwing things up — admitting you need help, though it’s a little easier when you have God to blame for your problem in the first place.

So Sable is currently a bit depressed by her condition (see Figure 1), and I have to admit that I laughed at her several times when she came back to work in the shop. She looks like some sort of freakish monster — her body is completely shaved, save for her tail and her head. It’s not very nice to laugh out loud at your handicapped coworkers, and I’m ashamed over it, but it still cracks me up every time she pops her disproportionate head up from under the light table. I’m sure she senses my mocking, but I’ve plied her with extra attention and cranked the thermostat up on her bed for good measure. So I believe she’ll be fine, and when the weather warms up I’m thinking she may even appreciate what I’ve done for her.

Figure 1: It’s hard not to laugh when your coworkers show up with a new hairstyle, especially when it’s a radical one.

The other item that falls into the “act of God” category is a roof leak in the shop that became a real problem this spring with all the rain we’ve been having in Petaluma. And though I can blame God for the rain, I can’t blame God for the repair job I did, another example of my overconfidence. How hard could it be to repair a roof leak?

For years I’d seen cans of Henry’s Wet Patch at Home Depot, with its promise of working “even under water.” What they don’t tell you on the label is that roof patch material is really black napalm left over from the Vietnam war, and once you get it on you, on your clothes, on your car, on your cats, on your wife, on your printing press, or on the new carpet, there is no getting it off. I think I only got about 20 percent of the 3.5-gallon can on the roof, and ended up having to throw away my favorite pair of rubber gloves, several trowels, a brand-new pair of blue jeans, two shirts, a pair of tennis shoes (New Balance, no less) and several large bath towels. I’m not sure Henry’s Wet Patch contributed to Sable’s condition, but I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m pretty sure several crows in the neighborhood and at least one squirrel are still struggling to free themselves from the goop, and while I slowed the leak down, I didn’t completely stop it (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Despite several gallons of Henry’s Wet Patch Roof Repair, I still need a bucket or two to catch the dripping water as we suffer through an unusually wet spring in Petaluma.

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