Bent Nails

 

When I was 11, I decided that I wanted to build a treehouse. I was fascinated by them (still am). We had a tree that would sort of work so I started a project that would end up being a lesson.

My Dad was forced into early retirement because of health issues.  Back then, medical care for heart patients consisted of Coumadin and do nothing. He was not even supposed to lift his hands over his head.

We dried clothes on a clothesline (ask an old person). My Mom worked and since my Dad couldn’t reach up, it fell to me.   I started doing that at an age when I couldn’t even reach the clothesline.  I built a wooden step to be able to reach it. 

Buying building supplies for the treehouse was out of the question so the first order of business was to find materials for it.  A neighbor had replaced their front porch so I was able to salvage a bunch of boards from that.

A nearby business had replaced their shelves and had piled what they replaced out back.  I asked for it and they were glad to get it hauled off.

And nails.  My Dad didn’t believe in throwing away anything, so, he had a big bucket of bent nails.  More on that in a minute.

He made the first motorized ice cream maker anyone had ever seen out of salvaged parts.  When I was 8, he built me a go-kart out of odds and ends that he had collected. Somebody had given him a small engine that didn’t work when he got it and although it was hard to start, he got it to work. Brakes were putting your foot out.

But this treehouse wasn’t my Dad’s project—this was mine. And his medical restrictions wouldn’t let him help anyway. He would sit at the bottom of the tree in one of those old webbed lawn chairs, teaching and coaching me all along the way.

He insisted that it be done right. No shortcuts were allowed. 

Before I could start, I had to straighten a bucket of bent nails. The thought of buying new nails for this project was preposterous.  My Dad had a small anvil and with hammer in hand, I pounded out the nails for my treehouse.

If you’ve ever built anything, you know that it can be a difficult task to hammer all the nails in straight. And once a nail starts to bend, it is going to keep bending. You can either pound it in half way and bent, or you can pull it out, straighten it, and try again.

Guess which way my Dad insisted that I do it?  Yep, pull it out. Do it right.

He always insisted that I pay attention to the small things. Don’t half-way do anything. One of his favorite sayings was “if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.”

Same thing in sports. Same thing in life. If you do all the little things right, the big things get somehow easier.

Build that (tree)house well, doing it right from the first nail. That gives you a much better foundation on which to build the rest of your structure. Or your life.

If you don’t do the little things well, then everything else will be done poorly. It’s all in the small things. Straighten those nails.