Analogies Don't Work

~ This article first appeared in the Leader-Vindicator newspaper. ~

There is a special bond between father and son.  Mom, admittedly, is everything to little boys.  But there is something special when Dad steps up to the plate, isn’t there?  Dad demonstrates how to be a man, and there is something unquestionably cool about showing off Dad to our friends. 

This bond is amplified in a farm setting.  Multigenerational farm families are held together with the invisible glue of respect, humility, and awe.  Also present in the relationship is a healthy dose of modesty.

Such modesty was a point of agony the day I observed that my herd bull had a broken penis and was not accomplishing the job of breeding cows.  My first thought was not of lost revenue or the daunting task of finding a replacement bull on short notice; first and foremost in my mind was that I needed to explain this to Dad, and I was uncomfortable doing it.

You can’t have that conversation by way of analogy:

“You know, Dad, uh…when the rebar is bent…there won’t be any occupants in the building.”

Dad looked back with eyes squinted, knowing I was telling him something without actually telling him.  He nodded the affirmative.  I believed we were having a real mind meld.

And what was the result of such inaccurate discussion?  Two days later Dad is ticked off because he rebuilt the barn gate without a bit of help from me and I’m stomping around with smoke coming out my ears because he’s withholding fatherly advice on what to do with Broke Weiner the Bull.  Neither of us had the slightest idea what the other was doing.

Precise discussion is hard.  When it comes to relaying expectations I fall flat.  The most helpful instruction is detailed to the point of obsession and yet explaining that level of detail to another comes off as being rude or condescending. 

I did a trial run and explained to my dad exactly how I expect a temporary fence post to be positioned and how then to hang a wire on it.  It was a seriously long discussion and that was just to put a post in the ground.  I’d write a book to explain how to put together the whole fence!  It feels weird taking so much time to explain something so very simple, so we avoid the awkwardness and stick to that wonderful mantra of failure: “Just do what you think is right.”

Speaking personally, I’ve done a lot of wrong things I thought were right.  With that in mind, maybe what I think is right isn’t at all what someone wants me to do.  They actually want me to do what they think is right, but they’re uncomfortable saying it.

My wife is an excellent mom.  She’s so good at raising our kids that even when she’s improvising there is an instinct leading her through the mess.  But when I ask her how I can help she’ll say “I don’t know.”  She does know exactly what she’d do if she had the opportunity; what she actually means is that the series of little nuanced maneuvers to silence the screaming baby and simultaneously settle the pyromaniac 4 year old is so complicated that she doesn’t know how to explain it to me.

I remember my mom blowing off her frustration with my grandpa because he’d never tell her what he wanted.  “Oh, don’t trouble yourself with me,” he’d say in his selfless manner.  He was trying to lessen her burden; in reality he was increasing it because she had to guess what needed done and retry each time she guessed wrong. Now I find myself as the source of similar frustration for the poor woman.  Maybe vagary is genetic.

In fact, almost nothing we say contains clearly communicated expectations.  This is why lawyers carry so much power in society; they’re filling in for us trying to be polite with one another.  I think I’m going to stop being polite.

There is a successful farm that I follow and it has only recently occurred to me that the farm is not successful due to a keener sense of farming than the rest of us possess.  The farm is successful because the people managing it have taken the time to painstakingly spell out each and every expectation for each and every task.  The manual for sliding a chicken coop eight feet across the ground is twenty seven pages long.  It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  The owner is known globally and travels extensively every year to speak; I’ve heard that his fee is $25,000.  I sit here with $47 in my bank account laughing at how stupid he is for being obsessive.  I bet he laughs, too.

I wonder if life would radically change for each of us if we stopped beating around the bush when we talk to each other.  The more I think about it, the more I believe it would; practically everything I say is downgraded for one reason or another.  I want to take a shot at change, but will I be brave enough?  I hope.  All I want for my family is to be a part of a strong and organized whole.  The instruction manual is going to be thick, but it’s worth it.