Doing It Properly

However, I was discussing the knowledge all members of our family had, about doing your job properly. About earning the respect of those you work with. And of always giving a one hundred percent effort. It was instilled in us early, and I don’t mean the comment parents throw out of, “If you’re not going to do it properly, don’t do it all”.  They never really meant that. Because in most cases, in our family, they really needed us to do it properly straight away. I remember a school holiday where we were told we had to help our father repaint the front wall. The wall was done in the style called ‘rough cast cement’ where a thick cement mix containing small pebbles is plastered over the base surface, in this case bricks, and painted. In this case, with a paint that was badly flaking. So we were informed as the holidays started, that some of our time would be in repainting the wall. That could be fun, or so we thought.
Unfortunately, it certainly wasn’t just a matter of repainting. It was a matter of washing down the wall first. Actually it was a matter of ‘scrubbing’ down the wall with sugar soap, to remove the old mould and lichen growth. That took two mornings to reach the far end from the gate. Of course we had to do both sides of the gate, and both sides of the fence, and, the house side included several cacti in the garden around the wall. We were already loosing interest after two mornings, and knowing our father would be wanting it finished before the weekend meant it had to get done. When he arrived home that evening and had a look, he told us we had done a good job it was ready for stage two. ‘The painting’ we thought enthusiastically.  But no, to do the job properly, we first had to brush the loose paint and rough cast cement with wire brushes to clean it off, before it could be painted. Which meant another couple of days of scrubbing.
Our young arms were already tired from the washing, and now we had to do it all over again? With wire brushes? It was not a fun holiday experience. I secretly hoped for a Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Huckleberry Finn moment. But there were no other neighbourhood kids coming up to ask if they could have a go. So we started in with the wire brushes, having to clean up the loose paint. It didn’t take long before we realized that small young people don’t necessarily have a lot of strength in their arms, and despite our best efforts, were soon skinning our knuckles, as the brushes would slip from our hands as they rapidly tired. And knowing our Father would be back that evening to inspect, we kept at it. Although, we were already looking for any possible reason to be distracted from the task. Any reason. Please!
(Continued tomorrow)