Scott Gill's Blog - Posts Tagged "big-picture"
Please, Paint the Possums!
I’ve crafted lattes at Starbuck’s, called for credit histories, clerked at juvenile court, landscaped, loaded trucks, and pastored a church, but one of the craziest jobs I worked was when I painted streets and made street signs for Shelby County, Tennessee.
I’d arrive at the sign shop after college classes, greeted by a broom-pushing inmate. We picked up guys from the local prison to do the grunt work. They’d sweep floors, handle 55 gallon paint barrels, set out cones, you name it. All were minor security, behind bars for multiple DWI’s or drug charges. They were happy to get out of their cells and most worked incredibly hard. I’d fill the sign order for the day, stop signs somebody ignored (and crushed), or a favorite stolen street name. The process was easy: take the metal blank (sheet metal cut out for the particular sign), place the specific sign design on top (made of a reflective rubbery material), and bake it in an oven. In 10 minutes I could turn out five or six of your everyday traffic signs.
But the real fun came when they’d radio me out to paint.
Sometimes I’d get to paint the white sideline that edges the streets (the yellow or dotted center line was more difficult and needed a professional). The driver would cruise about five miles per hour while you steered a wheel that lined up the paint gun. Then you’d hit the button to spray the glass beaded paint, and if you weren’t careful, your mistake would be seen by the countless number of drivers that cruised up and down the road daily.
Thousands must have giggled at Grady’s blunder.
After receiving a call on the radio, I jumped in an escort truck and sped out to the particular country roads that had been assigned. I knew I was close when I saw the fresh white and yellow stripes. Grady was the new guy and they stuck him on the white line right off the bat. For the most part he’d done okay, there were a few wriggles that would give a driver pause (might wonder at his sobriety) but that was normal for a first timer. Then I saw something crazy. The line suddenly jutted out into the lane like a chalk outline of a murder. It encircled a mound of fur, which as I neared, turned out to be a dead possum, hit on the side of the road sometime in the night. Apparently, Grady was so focused while painting the line that when he came up on the possum, he didn’t know what to do so he yanked the gun and painted around it. I pulled up to the parked paint truck as the boss corrected him, “Grady, next time you come up on a possum, switch off or paint him, don’t paint around him!”
Funny, sometimes in whatever we do, we become so focused on the details that we miss the bigger picture. Grady didn’t consider that it would be easier to just paint the possum, that we could just fill in the gap of the corpse. Now we’d have to cover the crime scene and redo the line. It’s so easy to miss the proverbial forest because of all those darn trees! I’ve known ministers (me included) so entangled in theological questions almost as silly as the number of angels that fit on a pin (3 as a matter of fact), that they forget a world fraught with staving people. As an educator, it’s easy to explode on “Johnny” for flicking a bottle top, distracting from my cool power-point, and forget he hungers for attention since dad’s death in a car accident. You name the job, it doesn’t matter, the point is, sometimes in minding the details, we miss most important things.
Sometimes it’s best that we just paint the possums.
I’d arrive at the sign shop after college classes, greeted by a broom-pushing inmate. We picked up guys from the local prison to do the grunt work. They’d sweep floors, handle 55 gallon paint barrels, set out cones, you name it. All were minor security, behind bars for multiple DWI’s or drug charges. They were happy to get out of their cells and most worked incredibly hard. I’d fill the sign order for the day, stop signs somebody ignored (and crushed), or a favorite stolen street name. The process was easy: take the metal blank (sheet metal cut out for the particular sign), place the specific sign design on top (made of a reflective rubbery material), and bake it in an oven. In 10 minutes I could turn out five or six of your everyday traffic signs.
But the real fun came when they’d radio me out to paint.
Sometimes I’d get to paint the white sideline that edges the streets (the yellow or dotted center line was more difficult and needed a professional). The driver would cruise about five miles per hour while you steered a wheel that lined up the paint gun. Then you’d hit the button to spray the glass beaded paint, and if you weren’t careful, your mistake would be seen by the countless number of drivers that cruised up and down the road daily.
Thousands must have giggled at Grady’s blunder.
After receiving a call on the radio, I jumped in an escort truck and sped out to the particular country roads that had been assigned. I knew I was close when I saw the fresh white and yellow stripes. Grady was the new guy and they stuck him on the white line right off the bat. For the most part he’d done okay, there were a few wriggles that would give a driver pause (might wonder at his sobriety) but that was normal for a first timer. Then I saw something crazy. The line suddenly jutted out into the lane like a chalk outline of a murder. It encircled a mound of fur, which as I neared, turned out to be a dead possum, hit on the side of the road sometime in the night. Apparently, Grady was so focused while painting the line that when he came up on the possum, he didn’t know what to do so he yanked the gun and painted around it. I pulled up to the parked paint truck as the boss corrected him, “Grady, next time you come up on a possum, switch off or paint him, don’t paint around him!”
Funny, sometimes in whatever we do, we become so focused on the details that we miss the bigger picture. Grady didn’t consider that it would be easier to just paint the possum, that we could just fill in the gap of the corpse. Now we’d have to cover the crime scene and redo the line. It’s so easy to miss the proverbial forest because of all those darn trees! I’ve known ministers (me included) so entangled in theological questions almost as silly as the number of angels that fit on a pin (3 as a matter of fact), that they forget a world fraught with staving people. As an educator, it’s easy to explode on “Johnny” for flicking a bottle top, distracting from my cool power-point, and forget he hungers for attention since dad’s death in a car accident. You name the job, it doesn’t matter, the point is, sometimes in minding the details, we miss most important things.
Sometimes it’s best that we just paint the possums.
