Beech Tree News Network

My husband, Garey, measures everything.  He will come into the room where I’m reading and say something like, “I think I can make room between the air compressor and the first kiln to make room for your second kiln.  I measured, and I’m about two inches short, but I can move the first kiln toward the door a bit and the air compressor toward the wall.”
I said something last week about wanting edging stones and colorful rock around the two Bradford Pear trees in the front yard.  This weekend, Garey was out there measuring the exact distance from the center of each tree to the inside perimeter of each stone.  I’m sure he probably put a level on each stone, as well as on the colorful rock around the trees.  I do appreciate the way the whole project looks when he’s finished, but I can’t watch the process without breaking out in hives.
I’m amazed at Garey’s kind of attention to detail.  I tend to use what Red Green calls “the most accurate measurement known to man.”  I eyeball it.  If it looks like it will fit, then I think it will fit, and there’s no need to take up valuable time with all of that measuring. 
Although, there was that time when I bought an area rug that looked like it would fit in the dressing area of one of my bathrooms.  When Garey and I tried to install the rug, it was obvious that it was way too big for the space.  With that irritating rationality and wisdom that has become his trademark, Garey said, “You know, a tape measure is a lot cheaper than a rug.”
 I know a lot of my aversion to measuring is because I struggle with math.  My friends who are good at math tell me they like math because it is an absolute.  It is a constant, they say.  As proof, they always give the same example, “one plus one always equal two.”  Maybe, that’s why I don’t like math. 
I like words because there are so many different ways to say a thing.  If you don’t like a particular word in a sentence, you can exchange it for another.  Take the words “one plus one equals two” for example.  If I wanted, I could change one word in the sentence just to mix things up a bit.  Like this: One plus one equals thirteen.  See, I made you sit up and take notice, didn’t I?  “1 + 1 = 2” could never do that.
Words are things you can work with.  You’re not boxed in or driven mad by the inflexibility.  I read once that the man who came up with all of the letter and number combinations for the game Bingo went mad (this was way before the invention of computers).  I have never read a story of anyone who works with words for a living being driven mad by them—we’re usually already crazy.  For evidence of that, just read the book, The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester.  It is the story of the compiling of the Oxford English Dictionary by Professor James Murray.  Professor Murray was shocked to find out that the person who had submitted more than 10,000 words to his project was Dr. W.C. Minor, an inmate at an asylum for the criminally insane.  (Dr. Minor was a Civil War veteran who was locked up in the asylum way before he started submitting words to Professor Murray.)
When we moved into the house where we presently live, the kitchen had a small refrigerator.  I told Garey I wanted to move that small one to his shop and put the refrigerator we brought with us in my kitchen.  Garey measured the space between the cabinet and the wall where the small refrigerator was located then told me my refrigerator would not fit into that space.  “It is a half of an inch too wide,” he said. 
“What’s a half of an inch!” I scoffed, “We can make it fit.”
Garey wasn’t too keen on the idea, but we turned it and wiggled it and got into the floor and pushed it with our feet and legs until my big refrigerator was lodged into place.  If I had let the mere fact that the measurements didn’t add up stop me, I would have had to live with that little refrigerator for the next ten years.
Of course, when the refrigerator breathed its last, it had to be cut out from between the cabinet and the wall with a Saws-All, but that’s beside the point.   Garey said it probably suffocated to death.  He can be so negative.  It’s probably from all that measuring.