I Know Best



Sometimes I see myself putting on my “I Know Best” coat.  After all, I worked at AT&T for 99 years, I must have picked up a thing or two along the way.  Logically then when the streetwise sage and I decided to take apart my laptop in order to see why the fan wasn’t kicking on … I was determined to be in the “thick of things”.   There are 4,325 microscopic screws that hold a laptop together and some kind of “ribbon” cable that is no thicker than the foil rip cord of a Hershey chocolate kiss.  We watched a 10 minute YouTube video on how to take apart your laptop … bit by byte by bit  and then we decided to tackle the challenge.

The redneck is full of all kinds of confidence … “I know what I’m doing” .. he’d tell me.  “Yes, but I’d feel better if it was ME who broke something while we are fixing this”, I’d insist.  We play very well together day and night, but when it comes to doing a “team project” we are still learning to speak each other’s language.  I like models and methodology and he’s more Jeff Foxworthy Get ‘er Done.  More to the point I think he really does prefer to work alone … and I like to “collaboratively spearheading” a task.   You can see how worlds might collide?

Because we were doing brain surgery on a computer, I bring to the table all of my relevant experiences (and some not so relevant) and he of course brings the common sense that comes with a jack of all trades.  We would watch and pause the video … vie for position a bit on who would unscrew the next layer of laptop inards and then we would carefully mark down what screws went where on an over-sized index card.  It was all going really well .. until we came to one of those “ribbon” cables.  As it was, we had one more piece of gold flake that wasn’t on the video … long story short I broke the hinge on the lock that presses the ribbon down to make contact with the wires.

There was the obligatory and brief … you did that wrong comments and self-defending as you might expect … but somehow … with two hairpoint precise tweezers … several reading glasses and flashlights … “we” got the piece back in place.  After of course finding a nickle size hairball that had spawned inside of the cpu cooling fan which was the culprit for the system shutting down without warning.  I say “we” … but truly I don’t think I could have done that by myself.  I’d like to think that he couldn’t do it alone either … that somehow together we make a better team, but truth is he’s BillyBobJoe McGuyver and he could have done it with duct tape had we not succeeded in reattaching the plastic clip chip.

Last week it was a plumbing issue, decidedly his domain and he does look dashing in his I-Know-Best-Jacket and I could tell that my “contributions” by way of suggestions on what to do to promote the flag were not being well received.  So I waited until we weren’t wading in waste and offered the protocol that it was important to always hear the other person out.  To adopt a posture of listening that validated they were bright and may have something of value to offer to the conversation.  And of course, that didn’t mean we actually implemented a suggestion that would cause the toilet tank to crack by adding boiling water directly to the basin …nonetheless we could listen respectfully and counter with grace and patience and common sense hell to the NO.

knowitallAllowing for the possibility that we may not know best … and being able to trust that in the end it will all work out … goes a long way in working with other sentient beings … be they our lover, mother, brother or yes even with our kids.  Each of us have something to offer and we may never notice what that is if we are wearing our michelin tire ski jacket.

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