My earliest memory of following directions in school was a kindergarten lesson. Mrs. Richardson gave us each a square piece of colored paper. We had scissors. She told us to round off the corners of the square. We would thus make a circle. I meticulously rounded off the corners of my square. What I ended up with resembled a television tube. I informed Mrs. Richardson that her instructions were faulty. She pointed out to me the other students’ results, which were various circular to egg shaped pieces of paper. I said they may be more circular, but they obviously did not arrive there by following her instructions. They just took the paper and scissors and cut circles.
She apologized and promised to do better in the future. We got along just fine.
When I was born, I did not come with a warning label. My parents rarely, if ever, intervened in any of my conflicts with teachers or administrators at school. My mom or dad would get a call, and they would say, “Take it up with Ford.” Or in high school, “Take it up with Cranford.” Needless to say, adults were a little shocked to hear that kind of response from parents, especially from two who were legally trained and were so involved in politics and the school board, etc. I was the youngest of four. I think it was a combination of my parents were tired of dealing with petty bureaucrats, and the fact that they knew that I could hold my own with these people any day. I guess they were right. After all, I had publicly humiliated both of our US Senators and sometime VPs on their international policy positions in open fora by the time I was 15. (Hubert Humphrey & Walter Mondale) But I digress. This is about following directions.
When I was in high school, I worked as a bicycle mechanic and part-time manager at my mom’s bicycle shop. She had a sewing machine and vacuum machine shop next door. One evening, she and my dad went out for dinner and left me to watch both shops. There was a door between the two. A couple came in. They were interested in a Viking/Husqvarna sewing machine. They asked me if I could show them how to sew a buttonhole. I told them, quite honestly, that I had never used this machine and had never sewn a buttonhole, but that my mom always told me “‘If you can read, you can cook’, so I will look it up in the manual.” That’s what I did.
I sewed a perfect buttonhole step by step and cut the slit. I was amazed! Instead of being impressed, these people were angry. They told me that I was trying to con them; and that I had certainly done that many times before, to make it look so easy! I assured them, that that was the first time I had ever sat down in front of a Viking sewing machine. Viking just wrote their instructions that well. They could try it themselves and have the same result. There was no convincing them. They left angry.
Sometimes, you just can’t win. I have replayed that scene in my mind countless times through the years. I don’t know if the price was too high, if I was too pretty, or what the problem was.
One thing I know: the directions were spot on!
And I know how to follow directions!
Just ask Mrs. Richardson.